Live In Trentville
Unlike the distant "18/8/81" or the more recent "Wrong Ninna Nanna", this new solo work contains no piano or other instrumental parts. In this release, which occurred like all truly welcome things in an unexpected and unsought way, I have collected some of my own compositions created only from sound material recorded around or taken from other recorded music. Such material has been mutated with various sound processings, and assembled by multiplying layers in both digital and analog environments…
Perspectives And Echoes / Tautologos III
-bRt- group for music creationGaudenz Badrutt, live electronics / Estelle Beiner, violin / Jacques Demierre, piano / Jonas Kocher, accordion (Tautologos III) / Stephen Menotti, trombone / Manon Pierrehumbert, harp / Christian Wolfarth, percussion
Artistic direction: Gaudenz Badrutt & Jonas Kocher
Liner notes by Lê Quan Ninh:Free improvisation is defined, among other things, by its practioners' refusal to rely on a form composed by others. Partially, perhaps, from pride, but above all from playfu…
Maiandros
Testimony to the first encounter of the trio during a concert given at the cave12 on the 28.10.2020, on the same evening of the new Covid announcements which brought on a re-confinement in France, and eve to a six-month long shutdown of cultural places in Switzerland. A concert from which we emerged staggering and with burning ears due to the ongoing crisis surrounding us. A masterful sonic performance. Before silence.
Drawing from the dense and intense sound material of the evening, Francisco M…
Hoof Stand
Tip! * 300 copies. In process of stocking * Hoof Stand is the third vinyl output by Primorje, the collaborative project between Giovanni Donadini (Ottaven, Canedicoda) and Matteo Castro (Mercury Hall, Lettera 22, also founder of Second Sleep label). Keeping their focus on a minimal yet disruptive 4-track recorders-based set-up, in the nine tracks making up this 12" the duo sew up rough textures of oblique tape loops intertwined with dub echoes and slowed down tempos, giving shape to what appears…
almenrauschen
These five albums by Klaus Janek appear to have been originally released in 2018, but were bundled together under the title almenrauschen in 2019 in nice colour-coded sleeves designed by Stephanie Roderer – I’ll refer to this aspect at the head of each review section – in an edition of 300 units. The name “almenrauschen” derives from the aural sensation perceiving a non intentional sound world and transforming it to musical sense-making.
This bundle includes the following albums on vinyl:
- Casp…
Infinite Bang
'Janek’s “source of inspiration” was apparently Stanislaw Lem’s novel Solaris and Janek’s own social observations in Prospect Park in New York City “…where I was living during the main research period for this work”. I’m not familiar with Lem’s novel, but if you’re expecting echoes or resonances from the soundtracks of either the Tarkovsky film or the George Clooney remake, I’m afraid you may be disappointed.
On side A we find “Infinite Bang Part 1”, which is more solo contrabass and electronics…
Prospecting
'The first track on side A is “Violeros Revisitados”, which is a fight between the sounds made by Brazilian traditional musicians and the UHER Report 400 tape machine the sounds were recorded on. This source material was recorded by Gunther Kipfmüller in Northeast Brazil in the 1970s. Kipfmüller’s daughter, Milena , processes the raw material while Janek adds his contrabass and electronics to the mixture. Brazil born, Milena is also Berlin-based and works as”… a freelance soundartist, dramaturgu…
Reciprocum
Magenta. Road at night. Its probably worth quoting from the sleeve-notes so you get an idea of what the intention is on this disc: “The album consists of music chosen from a pool of recordings made over a time span of 10 years and according to its expression composed ‘together’. All of the music was created through a practice of combining the compositional and performative act. The album making process consists of two levels: the music created in the past functions as material and is put into fo…
Songs Our Mother Taught Us
*2022 stock* The work of upstate New York noise-jazz trio Borbetomagus is frequently described in terms of overwhelming power and aggression. In a live context, that's absolutely the dominant impression one is likely to get. On record, though, it's possible to have some control over the volume, and thus to listen closely and carefully and discern real technique at work, not to mention a subtlety that's not really surprising, given that saxophonists Jim Sauter and Don Dietrich, and guitarist Dona…
Out Of Standard !! France 4
*Limited edition 100 copies* 4th compilation of French unconventional projects on Out of Standard!!, ADN side label. Mastered by Ruggero Tajé. Dedicated to Chris Marker.
Stellan Veloce's Complesso Spettro
Tip! *200 copies limited edition* Stellan Veloce’s first record for Hyperdelia is not only their debut album but simultaneously the inception of a band: Stellan Veloce’s Complesso Spettro. At Veloce’s disposal, the players have turned into a Frankensteinian super group: with Andreas Dzialocha on electric bass, Bridget Ferrill doing electronics & processing, Julia Reidy on guitars, Marta Tiesenga on baritone sax, Earl Harvin and Jesse Quebbeman-Turley on drums, Elena Kakaliagou playing horn, Carl…
Grid Ravage
‘Grid Ravage’s debut album for Dropa Disc sounds organic, just like their live performances, with the music being born on the spot. The tight drumming of Louis Evrard (Ottla), the razor-sharp cello of Gino Coomans (Sheldon Siegel) and the permeating electronics of Yves De Mey naturally flow into each other. The result is a strikingly versatile and accessible record, on which the tension is built up in every track, until it’s not clear anymore who’s being followed around by whom. In this way, th…
Polvere di Rabbia
*300 copies limited edition* Over the last decade, Rome-born, Brussels-based eclectic composer Giovanni Di Domenico has been ranging through a diverse number of fields within experimental music. Now, in the midst of a close series of astounding releases, Di Domenico adds another superb piece to his prolific discography as proof of an ever more enduring state of grace. The first of his works ever to feature voice and language as foregrounding elements, the five truly visionary pieces making up Po…
Direccional o no · El pensamiento modifica la materia sobre la que se asienta
"As far as my artistic memory goes, I have always been fascinated by the boundaries between continuity and discontinuity, between the sayable and the unsayable, between the countable and uncountable; between what can be described completely by an algorithm and what cannot; between precise writing and writing that only manages to approximate any given phenomenon; between directionality and a lack thereof, adirectionality — a conflict that, not without a certain degree of internal struggle, I woul…
Voll.Halb.Langsam.Halt
Hamburg sound artist Gregory Büttner often surfaces on his own 1000Fussler label, but here he is on Gruenrekorder, the home of artistic field recording releases. Voll. Halb. Langsam. Halt. (Gruen 181) was recorded on an old steamboat that was built in the 1930s and happens to be made completely of metal. Using his contact mics, Büttner has created a “metal” record putting him directly in line with Test Dept, Neubaten, and other industrial acts who recycled metal to produce a robust clang. „Voll.…
Hiking The Trails Of Mount Muzak
No time to waste: nine months after Tim Vanhamel released 'Dubs Pour Oh La La', his debut album under the moniker Comité Hypnotisé, the Millionaire frontman presents already the second album 'Hiking The Trails Of Mount Muzak'. Hardly leaving any traces of the dubbed out vibe which marked the first record, Tim expands his Comité Hypnotisé universe to a surprising next level on this second album: exploring a place where James Last, Wu-Tang Clan and Dj Shadow are cooking up a Thai meal in a Peruvia…
Plane/Talea 31-34
** Edition of 300 copies ** Since a few years Alessandro Bosetti has been collecting voices that become part of the Plane/Talea archive. The creation of the archive stems from dozens of individual meetings and recording sessions, in which each voice is detached from its owner or originator and anonymized. With each new iteration and performance, Bosetti plays the archive as if it were an instrument. He searches for hidden details and correspondences through exploration, immersion and contemplati…
Time Deferred
Psychedelic visions, blackouts, and blinding lights reveal an unusual, sick, and feverish musicality. (…) Hospital-like beeps transmit a subtle uneasiness, as electrodes applied to the brain draw bewildering tracings. And while Athanasia represents the idea of immortality in Greek mythology, here the gods come back from the dead only to ensure us an existence nurtured by the freezing rays of a black sun. - Massimiliano Busti, Blow Up
Two Duos
Tip! “Two Duos” is pressed from cellist Okkyung Lee’s most recent OTO Residency; the first side a duo with Jérôme Noetinger on Revox B77 and the second with Nadia Ratsimandresy on Ondes Martenot. Cut together, the two meetings seem to raise three cellos in the search for expressive voice: the cello, it’s magnetic reproduction, and the dual controls of the machine invented to expand on its musical qualities. On the A side Noetinger’s opening tape hiss establishes a current; an electrical partner …
Sound Journeys: Switzerland
Sound Journeys: Switzerland is the culmination of a series of diital EPs focusing on artists engaged in the Swiss experimental music scene, here presented as an 11-track compilation on CD and digital. Airplay so far has been on BBC Radio 3, Resonance FM, WFMU and more. It has been compiled by producer, broadcaster and Nonclassical A&R Nick Luscombe (BBC Radio, Late Junction) following a visit to the country and research into the current activities of Swiss academic music.Nick Luscombe says: "The…