The Voyager Golden Record
In 1977, NASA launched two spacecraft, Voyager 1 and 2, on a grand tour of the solar system and into the mysteries of interstellar space. Attached to each of these probes is a beautiful golden record containing a message for any extraterrestrial intelligence that might encounter it, perhaps billions of years from now. This enchanting artifact, officially called the Voyager Interstellar Record, may be the last vestige of our civilization after we are gone forever.
The Golden Record tells the sto…
Five Fertile Exchanges
**Limited and numbered to 150 copies** Little known outside of his native Australia, Peter Blamey has been recuperating discarded electronics into artworks for more than a decade. As Douglas Kahn writes in his sleeve notes here, he belongs to an artistic tradition unique to Australia that trades sound and energy. Having cut his teeth in an extensive exploration of disposed motherboards, Blamey has more recently worked with photo-voltaic cells, homemade electromagnets and rudimentary turbin…
Invisible(s) Archipelago(s) #1 – Serendib rhythms
"The Unfathomless Series returns with another pair of fine releases, whose moods are polar opposites. Five Elements Music‘s lokrum patterns draws the listener in, while Stéphane Marin’s Invisible(s) Archipelago(s) n°1 – Serendib rhythms contains sounds that many would choose to avoid. Now to Sri Lanka, a land of many islands, whose sounds have been worked into a single composition by Stéphane Marin. The title may be unwieldy (Invisible(s) Archipelago(s) #1 – Serendib rhythms), but the idea is no…
An Electronic Visit To The Zoo, Sound Hypnosis
Closing out a trilogy of releases initially readied by the Harriman, NY powerhouse Spectrum (following the Jack Tamul & William Hoskins titles) is this fantastic set of noisy synthesizer adagios, composed in the late 70s by William Strickland on Moog Modular, Organ, and Four-Channel Tape. Offering a pair of conceptual, side-length suites, a series of exceedingly lo-fi miniatures meets us on the A-Side; "An Electronic Visit to the Zoo" seems to almost ignore its own premise - despite the red-herr…
Anthropological Constants
Who is Kymatik? Kymatik first appeared on Paradigm Discs back in 1995 with a spontaneous composition created alone in the control room, with all the sounds being derived from a simultaneous improvisation being played in the studio by Morphogenesis. Three years later Paradigm released the full-length Kymatik CD Dar-As-Sulh Vol.1 (PD 015CD), a selection of pieces, some based on purely mathematical ideas, others are more hypnotic pulse based psychedelic soundscapes, some works being performed live …
Chimie Du Son / Stoeien Met Geluid
I hope you're been enjoying the Creel Pone 19x "Doubles" series; some great multi-disc titles that simply couldn't wait for their usual "every ten catalogue number" positions, especially as the series is running out of spots approaching its intended 200-title terminus. Here we've got an absolute corker, offering a mid-50s, private-press 10" release by Swiss sound engineer Francis Jeannin, who, verbally, takes us through the techniques of making Tape Music before letting loose with a side of home…
Sisal
2015 release ** Limited edition of 200 hand-numbered copies. "There is a temptation to connect field recordings with documentaries. It's an impulse compelled by the sense that field recordings are uncontrived compared to conventional music, which requires instrumentation and a high degree of human intervention. But documenting and repeating the sounds of nature requires just as much mediation as does strumming a guitar or playing a keyboard. For one thing, Montero's subjects are precise. He cons…
Luv / Kopfuberwelle
Sabine Vogel 'luv', and Chris Abrahams + Sabine Vogel 'kopfüberwelle'. Another split disc, presenting two aspects of the music of Berlin-based flautist - composer - improviser Sabine Vogel. The first half of the disc contains a solo composition created from recordings made by Sabine with Landscape Quartet, a group committed to improvisation in and with natural environments. The second half of the disc features an extended improvised performance by Sabine on flutes in duo with The Necks' Chris Ab…
Lignes D'Erre & Randons
Secrets. Hidden places. Unnamed memories. This is what is known of Kassel Jaeger ‘s Lignes d’erre & Randons. Furthermore, the name Kassel Jaeger itself is a fiction — a pseudonym employed by a Parisian composer who claims membership at GRM. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to make of that, or if I’m supposed to believe it. The composer teases with the notion that the source sounds for this electro-acoustic album originate from places that are important to Jaeger, whoever this person may be ; and…
Circle wind
'Circle Wind' fields are recorded at Tokyo, Kanagawa, Niigata, Nagano, etc.. yet what's interesting is the time that recordings were made, each recording session was taking place between midnight and dawn, and the techniques that been used. "Feeble vibration and passage of air. It resembles Zen and meditation to capture the piece of these delicate sounds aurally." Hiroki Sasajima is the sound artist residents in Tokyo. He had started the activity of field recording around 2007. Since then, he go…
Humid Weather
Exceptional Polish imprint, Bocian Records presents a necessary vinyl edition of Kevin Drumm's super limited 2012 release for Hospital Productions, "Dedicated to my least favorite thing in the world, humidity." Over two sides breaking down to three pieces, Drumm expresses his irritation through a mixture of field recordings and microtonal drones made in july/august 2012 and transposed with intercepted voice recordings from summer 1995 at Mosquito Net Studio, Chicago, Il.
In 'Humid Weather' prope…
Physical Point
** Edition of 200 copies ** Lettera 22 is the duo of Matteo Castro and Riccardo Mazza, two main characters in the Italian noise and experimental scene, building incredible collages of field recordings and abused dynamics. The lucky few who attended their live set at the Dome in London for the Broken Flag 30th Anniversary - where they caused a speaker stack to fall over, almost setting fire to it - saw their potential unleashed and knows what we mean by saying that they have an incredible control…
Mermaids
** Edition of 250 copies ** Mermaids includes four tracks composed and recorded in early 2013. The concepts of the work are built around freedom - expressed by the use of the audio glitch - and unity framed in metaphors of water and transformation. All sound sources are mostly from the human voice. Jo Thomas is a London-based composer teaching sound design, composition and music technology at the University of East London. Her compositional work is primarily focused on the use of human voice, mi…
Cassette Memories Volume 3: South of the Border
"South of the Border is the third installment of my Cassette Memories album series. All field recordings were taped in Mexico, a country I've had a special fondness for since I was a little child. My first memory was watching photographs and Super-8 films my father shot in Mexico City from his time there during the 1968 Summer Olympics, where he competed as a member of the Japanese national hockey team. It made me realize there is a place completely different from Japan, and I started dreaming a…
Untitled Phenomenas In Concrete
Composed between 2008 and 2011, 'Untitled Phenomenas In Concrete' is a piece made out of 85 HighC/UPIC* sessions and 18 external sounds (recordings of snow falling, bones cracking, magnetic fields and insects). *UPIC is a computerised musical composition tool, devised by the composer Iannis Xenakis. It consists of a digitising tablet linked to a computer, which has a vector display. Interested by Xenakis' approach and wanting to draw the sound before hearing it, Francisco Meirino spent nearly fo…
Chitin
"Created by Slavek Kwi, Ireland during July-Sept 2011 from physical and stridulation sounds of various invertebrates: termites, ants, sting-less bees, leaf-hoppers (Amazonas, Brazil 2008-2009); electric insect (Pantanal, Brazil 2006 + Tasmania 2011); hermit crabs (Amhemland, Australia 2009); bee-hive (Czechie 1994). All sounds rec. by Kwi except ants inside tree-nest rec. with Francisco Lopez. This is a commission from "Les Instants Chavirés" (Montreuil, France) for "L'Audible Festival" 2011. De…
Overheard and rendered 2
At long last, and/OAR presents the second of a series of limited edition collections illustrating the various approaches to environmental sound art. These collections allow for longer format works to be presented within a multi-artist presentation. Also returning for the first time in five years is the custom card stock insert packaging housed inside clear vinyl sleeves. Yperiau, by French sound artist Eric Cordier, is a sonic exploration of the lower regions of the Maison de Radio France in Par…
The Peregrine
LP version. Room40 presents a reissue of Australian sound artist Lawrence English's acclaimed 2011 album The Peregrine, inspired by John Alec Baker's 1967 nature writing classic of the same name. "I first discovered The Peregrine when I was visiting my friend David Toop in London. He had the book on his desk and I picked it up and randomly turned to a page. It was an exquisite description of an Owl silently hunting. I was struck by the detail and evocative sense of listening in the writing. It w…
untitled, (magnetisms)
First collaborative project between Pierre Gerard (Belgium) and Andy Graydon (Germany/USA). Invited by winds measure to produce a work for cassette tape, the two artists focused on the the particular materiality of this sound technology, once so common and now so rare. Tape's manipulation of a magnetic field evoked other sorts of sensitive magnetic systems, from the intuitive navigation of migratory birds to the organization of the earth's polarity. Starting from this idea of polarity and homewa…
Rivages sur l'antipode
* 250 copies, hand numbered * Composed on a special request from ini.itu, “Rivages sur l'antipode” (shores on the opposite side of the earth) is his first vinyl LP and is based on similar archival material as the one used by Francisco López in his stunning “untitled #228”. Nonetheless, D'incise (aka Laurent Peter) has achieved radically different results, combining digitally-processed textures, microsamples and humming harmonics rippling out over broken rhythms. He has collaged the least obvious…