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The name Painjerk, the musical project of Kohei Gomi, didn’t come to mind for a long time. Offhand, I’d say it is likely that I reviewed very few of his releases. Many of those he released himself, and the ones of Harbinger Sound, Editions Mego, Alternative Tentacles and Hospital never reached me. He’s among the few musicians leaving the harsh noise behind and doing other projects. He calls it the “exploration and practice of kinematics of electro-acoustics using unorthodox methodologies, mainly…
In 2012, the Wergo label celebrates its 50th anniversary. For half a century, Wergo has been synonymous with contemporary music. The label's catalog reads like a virtual who's-who of modern music, both in terms of composers and performers. From the beginning, the intent of founder Werner Goldschmidt (from whom the label derives its name) was to provide listeners with a snapshot of current musical activity and innovation. Goldschmidt's label and mission, now managed by the publisher Schott, is ma…
For decades, Ludger Brümmer has represented a unique, courageous, and often instantly recognisable voice in electronic, algorithmic, and computer music. He develops structures that lead to aesthetic experiences normally found, if at all, only in the most expressive of instrumental works.
Ludger Brümmer’s music is dominated by processes. All processes are on a trajectory towards a climax or evolve from a climax to a minimum. Ultimately, a complete lack of orientation is to be achieved in the clim…
*200 copies limited edition* 'No Longer Human' is dedicated to the life and work of Osamu Dazai and his novel No Longer Human
First notebook:Antonio Tonietti: chitarra battente preparata, duduktavola armonica, synthClaudio Milano: voceMassimo Amato: piano
Second notebook:Antonio Tonietti: basso preparato, basso, synthClaudio Milano: voce
Third notebook:Antonio Tonietti: basso, synth, field recordingGiorgio Pinardi: voce
Epilogue:Antonio Tonietti: Electric Koto, field recordingSilvia Pegah Scagli…
*2024 stock* Berlin Strings is a string quartet consisting of Lisa Marie Vogel, Johanna Wundling, Tabea Haarmann-Thiemann and Luisa Babarro Fernández. Since meeting in the National Youth Orchestra and founding Berlin Strings 13 years ago, they have developed into explorers of their own sound. A sound that has always been imbued with the discipline of classical music, pure craftsmanship, the sublime rules of composition that make communication wordless. But also experimentation, flirting with dis…
Colliding Bubbles (surface tension and release) is a composition for string quartet and harmonica quartet, meaning that Quatuor Bozzini is playing string instruments while playing harmonicas. "The title refers to different kinds of bubbly matter which are set to collide within the composition, leading to different ruptures and possible release of surface tension. The collision of bubbles unfolds partly in relation to sound, where small fluctuations appear in the encounters between harmonicas and…
Sofa is proud to mark its 100th release with the stunningly beautiful double album Hereafter, a new major work from guitarist/composer Kim Myhr, written for the 15-piece Stavanger-based ensemble Kitchen Orchestra. “Hereafter can be seen as a meditation on mortality and transience”, Myhr explains. “It was written at a time where the prime minister of Norway told the country’s population that ‘you have to be prepared to lose someone dear to you’. It was like taken out of Tarkovsky’s “Sacrifice”. T…
*2024 stock* Computer Music serves as the official musical documentation of the November 1981 International Computer Music Conference, held at North Texas State University in Denton, Texas. The album features five compositions with music that ranges from electronic sounds to female vocals, flute and horns, stringed instruments, and percussion. The composers include Larry Austin, whose early works were recorded with the help of Leonard Bernstein; Bruce Pennycook, who now teaches music at the Butl…
"Olivier Messiaen once said that all you need to make music is a note and silence. For the composer Arash Yazdani, born in 1985 and raised in Isfahan, Iran (and now based in Tallinn, Estonia), a slightly adapted adage applies: All you need to make music is two frequencies – though Yazdani has a clear preference for notes extremely close in pitch. His music is full of tightly coiled beatings, both stationary and set in motion. These beatings function like black holes in his works, drawing other s…
*150 copies limited edition* "Most of the music I am attracted to represents some kind of undoing. Sun Ra's undoing of the big band, or of the jazz solo. Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern's undoing of the classical music concert. The A.A.C.M.'s undoing of the jazz combo and the club date. Pauline Oliveros' undoing of the musical score. Alice Coltrane, Don Cherry, and Cornelius Cardew's various undoings of the profession. What's more, none of these undoings are antagonistic or destructive. The thing u…
"Other Minds is happy to present The Water Has Found its Crack, the debut album by composer Joseph Bohigian. Consisting of four new works written since 2018, the collection finds the composer expertly handling a variety of performing forces, from laptop ensemble to string quartet. Each piece engages with a different aspect of the California-born composer’s position as a member of the Armenian diaspora. These include the legacy of displacement since the 1915 genocide, maintaining culture in exile…
*2023 stock* "This, the first CD dedicated entirely to work by composer Dario Palermo, features three substantial electroacoustic works written between 2009 and 2012. Palermo (b. 1970) has been involved with the use of new technologies in music since the early 1990s. His background includes studies with Giorgio Colombo Taccani and Giovanni Verrando and others, including Gerard Grisey, as well as in orchestral and chamber performance. His work, as typified in the three pieces presented here, is b…
Tip! Gene Coleman is a composer, musician and video director, who has created over 70 works for various instrumentation and media. Central to his work is the inventive use of sound, image and time, and the desire to create experiences that expand our understanding of the world. Since 2001 he has explored the global transformation of culture and music’s relationship with video, science and architecture. Gene has been developing a series of works around concepts of Neuro Music and Transcultural Mu…
Acclaimed NYC composer, producer and saxophonist Lea Bertucci explores dissonance, drone and dynamics with two new longform compositions for strings, electronics, harp and percussion on "Of Shadow and Substance".
'A room outdoors' is a 48 minute piece written in 2006 by Michael Pisaro-Liu for sustaining instrument, harmonium and field recordings. This was the first work in which Pisaro-Liu incorporated field recordings into his score. This double CD contains two different realizations of the piece, one made in Brussels during the lockdown in April 2020 and one set up in Cremona in June 2023, each realized by the following artists: Disc 1 features Belgium-based Guy Vandromme (keyboards) and Adriaan Severi…
The set of The Weather Pieces are reflections on the perception of meteorological phenomena. The listener is immersed in a hybrid sound world, as the line between the live performer and the computer generated propositions becomes blurred. The musician follows a score that leaves room for interaction with the computer’s ever-changing proposals. The works also use the performer’s voice, using spoken texts to convey inner thoughts and feelings. Les si doux redoux for basset horn grew out of an…
*2023 stock* This CD documents a series of works that I call "Musical Procedure." In composers' usual works, the sounds to be performed are written in a score; but in these pieces the procedures (which could also be called programs, algorithms or specification sheets) for shaping music, such as performance methods and the general ideas of the works, are written as concisely as possible, and the type of sound to be produced is left largely to the performers. The score is merely an arrangement of …
*2023 stock* Published in the Edo era (1664), "Shichikushoshinshu" is a beginner’s guide to three musical instruments—the "hitoyogiri" shakuhachi, the koto, and the shamisen—which includes lyrics and fingerings for songs believed to have been popular at the time. Tai decided to create a new musical instrument in order to perform the shamisen music in "Shichikushoshinshu" (Japan’s oldest shamisen “scores”). The result was the self-made electric stringed instrument he calls the coiled cello. In 20…
Three years after the release of Black Angels Songs, Miroslav Tóth together with Dystopic Requiem Quartet comes up with a rare album inspired by non-places, i.e. buildings and objects that were either unfinished, abandoned, over-multiplied, or were marked by mining and yet had no meaning in the end. Also featured on Non-places is Nénia, a track dedicated to the victims in Ukraine, written three days after the outbreak of war during the album's creation. The recordings were made in the Czech Repu…