Live at the LU
Recorded in May of 2002, almost a year after Fennesz' surprisingly successful (commercially) release, Endless Summer, one might have expected that this pairing would produce an intriguing collision of opposing forces. On the one hand you have all the pop-influenced, steamily melodic and erotic explorations that Fennesz had developed in the prior years. Countering that, one could readily imagine Keith Rowe as saboteur, finding rifts in the smooth mass to deviously penetrate and deflate. This does…
Songs for Nicolas Ross
The audio material of «Songs for Nicolas Ross» is taken from my travels 2000-2003 in the cities Amsterdam, Baltimore, Berlin, Caudeval, Lausanne, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, St. Pölten and Zürich. As the CD was for the birthday of Alessandro Bianco's son Nicolas Ross, I thought of the pieces as short songs, either as lullabyes or just brief sonic enivornments for him to enter into. I tried to imagine young Nicolas' perception of the sound around himself and his relation to this. This was the s…
Zahir
Hiss is an improvisational quartet made up of one Englishman and three Norwegians with an instrumental line-up that is unremarkable enough, but with a sound that is fairly unique. Keyboardist/electronicist Pat Thomas is a veteran of the British free improv scene while guitarist Ivar Grydeland, bassist Tonny Kluften and percussionist Ingar Zach -- though the latter three are younger -- are mainstays of the Norwegian free jazz and improv cultures. The reasoning behind the Arabic-sounding track tit…
Cistern
2005 release ** "Cistern was made in a two million gallon underground reservoir at Fort Worden, a de-commissioned military base overlooking the entrance to the Puget Sound. The space's resonance extended the instruments in a way similar to electronic processing. The acoustic properties of the cistern created new sonic relationships to which the group applied their musical concept. Cistern captures Doublends Vert's first experiences in the sound-world of the cistern. Doublends Vert formed in 2003…
Piano suspenso
Reissue of this 1999 release and out of print since a long time. Some reviews at the time of release : ' After a tentative opening consisting of damp harmonic scrapes, the piece takes off like a single-engined light aircraft when David Maranha kickstarts his four-motored Piano effect and then starts to tease single notes from the bubbling background with his bow. This is a great and physically affecting slab of sound, where the slightest minimal shift causes tectonic plates to groan. It's gravy …
Misiiki
Burkhard Beins: percussion & string instruments. Dirk Marwedel: extended saxophone. Michael Vorfeld: percussion & string instruments.
Still Point
Assumed Possibilities comprises of four musicians who understand the meaning and use of understatement and close listening. This quartets non-idiomatic music attains a minutely focused intensity, where the subtlest shifts in pitch, timbre and texture speak volumes. Though sounds sometimes sting and startle,the music carefully colours the aural environment,often hardly modifying the silence... growing out of and merging back into it. The results are detailed, meticulous, precise and responsive. S…
Zwingburgen des hedonismus - Mysterien des hafens
Part 9 of the ongoing re-release series of all early Tietchens albums from 1980—1991 on CD. This combines two seperate releases from 1987 (»Zwingburgen des Hedonismus«) and 1988 (»Mysterien des Hafens« on »Face To Face, Vol. 1«). »Zwingburgen des Hedonismus« was originally released as a one-sided LP on swedish label Multimood and features a singles 21 min. long track composed on a Fairlight CMI. »Mysterien des Hafens« was part of a split LP (the other side feat. Die Form) originally released on …
Music and Words
As a member of British experimental group Morphogenesis, Adam Bohman was no stranger to wayward sound experiments when recording this solo CD. Favoring acoustic sounds over electronic he explores the minute tendrils of sounds coaxed from any number of non-musical instruments. The standout on this Paradigm CD is a cassette piece which the artist made of candid recordings of mundane experiences and conversations, using the stop-start technique to construct a collage of text and environmental sound…