David Jackman Und Orchester - Rabenfeld (Flugzeug Schallplatten, 1999)

1 Untitled
2 Untitled
3 Untitled

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§ - Untitled 2 (self release, 2010)

Reçu un mail de Riccardo pour présenter son dernier travail, sous le pseudonyme § / Received a mail from Riccardo to introduce his last work as §

§ is a b-side project of Riccardo from My Silver Booster. he made music with cheap casio keyboard, effects and other lo fi stuffs. Every release is experimental research with sound...

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Petit changement / Little change

Du fait de la nouvelle politique tarifaire de rapidshare, cela me coûterait presque trente euros par mois pour le volume de stockage dont j'ai besoin et je préfère utiliser mon argent pour acheter des disques... donc je passe chez megaupload...
J'espère juste que rapidshare ne supprimera pas mes fichiers trop vite... De toute façon, je rappelle que pour tout re-up, vous laissez un message en commentaire et dès que possible je m'en occupe...

Because of the new tariff policy from rapidshare, it would cost me almost thirty euros per month for the storage I need and I prefer to use my money to buy records ... So I move for megaupload ...
I just hope that rapidshare will not delete my files too fast ... Anyway, I recall that for any re-up, you leave a message in comment and as soon as possible I'll do it ...

The New Blockaders / Das Synthetische Mischgewebe - The Monosyllabic Bicycles Tri-Coloured Quadruples (Equation Records, 2008)

A1 Avant Le "Viva !"
A2 De L'accommodation
A3 Tambouriner Contemplativement
A4 Pui Tarauder
A5 Le Condyle Alors Concomitant
B1 Satiété De Soupçon Chancelant
B2 Orne Ultérieurement Ses Inouis D'approvisionnement De Callosité Contingente
C1 Importer Des Ermites A La Reputation Contumace
C2 C'est Les Convoyer Sur Un Onguent Grinçant
C3 Esuite Les Truffer Des Tentes Taillées
D1 Munitions Qui Flirtent
D2 Coccyx Jouettent Sur Un Chemin Dechiqueté
D3 Fidritures De Contraire De Fievreux
D4 Consument Une Demande De Peu De Choses

Das Synthetische Mischgewebe jouera le 16 octobre aux Instants Chavirés et les 25 et 26 octobre à Caen, entre ou autour de ces dates Guido Huebner recherchait quelques autres concerts donc au cas où....

In the last ten years I have worked on collaborations with several people - all of which demanded different working strategies. The usual approach is that of exchanging of sounds - one unencumbered by the native language of the artists involved. However, I believe that discussing sound is like choosing wallpaper - together with one's significant other.

Where the possibilities for artistic creation seem virtually limitless, particular in sound, many artists seems to restrict themselves - using limitations as a sort-if creative strategy. For example, using only digitally generated sounds or just using field recordings or recycling pre-existing recordings or just repeating the last success of the sound-art jet-set and so on. Generally these approaches were once efficient procedures of the fine arts - even prior to WWII. So why not continue with these?

But why do we see the utterly elementary reversal of academic music with its pre-occupation with ever more sophisticated compositional procedures, neglecting everything that is sensorial, emotive and emotional? This one-dimensional approach has drawn the blood out of everything (nearly?) Suppose that a significant part of the reward of listening happens in the stomach, not just the head.

Taking a contrarian view, in the area in which our work is appreciated, the word composition seems to have been progressively banned, hardly ever does one come across a review that's talking in such terms. Mostly we have to deal with classification (drownambientnoisefieldrecordingglitchblablabla). This is merely an act of choosing the right drawer (compartment) to get rid of the work in question, replacing it in order to go neatly onto the next one (likely not much different). Composition has shrunken to the same 'onlys' and 'justs' with which the selection of sounds is augmented. Fading sounds in and out, or stack them on each other until the bits and bytes are filled up. It's hardly more but a phenomenological proceeding, counting exclusively on the possible attractiveness, the sensational and seductive impact of the material itself. Sounds collected and held up like postcards of safaris in the dominion of audible distractions, musing on possible references to recognisable tendencies. This fits very well into the liberal commoditization where attitude is confused with art.

It appears to be enough to assemble and display rather than to venture for challenging combinations. Sounds and the aesthetic catalogue from which they derive have become something fetish-like to stand in and cover the deficiency in concept, composition - of structure and withered complexity. Organised as best like a medley of afflicted affinities abiding in the contradicting conventions of newness and recognizeability, furnishing easy associations for whoever it is on the auditory receiving end. Cosmetic bruises. Varnish on an écorché.

Sounds utterly snobbish to say such things such as this doesn't it? And I admit - voluntary - that far too many different intentions are confused in a single media for a multitude of different objectives - and there is no reason to share them all. Rewarding the listener who already assumed a choice is often replaced by a failing challenge, providing only means, but no direction, no statement.

To make a point out of being pointless is just not worth the plastic. It is worth as much as a map of a city that doesn't exist. Well, it's been quite a time since I have heard something that really gets me going, but there's a lot that makes me laugh, sad to say.

One suspects it is understandable for those who know my work that TNB with their anti-everything attitude have been precisely the right thing to come around at the right moment. Something to get rid of the reflections above. My work is certainly not a reaction to the aforementioned, but rather what they would like to listen to - regardless from who it comes from. TNB is the ‘something’ with which DSM felt comfortable with and could imagine a lot of possible options - yet remaining true to the both artists. Because whatever it is TNB kicks out of their domain of noise which is replaced in a split second by a thick antimatter that occupies the smallest gap. This is heavyweight nothingness, Sumo Zero to wrestle with, where others fade to grey, they offer you the fat end of the black hole.

More importantly - it is not just turning knobs and pushing faders. There is a firm hand in the material world (with dirty fingernails). No matter how much a sound may be processed (which often is overestimated) its origin is always somewhere in the real world.

It was decided to create a series of compositions that go completely to the opposite end of the rather continuous flux of scraping and screeching. I considered my part of the collaboration not as the usual mutual interweaving and/or processing of each others sounds, but of dragging TNB's recordings into a completely different territory without necessarily adding one's own share of sounds, but concentrated entirely on the compositional aspects. On the LP there's nothing but TNB to hear, using the recordings provided specifically for this purpose - as well as a good share of what one could call ‘trade-mark sounds’ from existing releases.

Incisive cuts and mutilating pastes in favour of a more organised structure, running against the accidental/incidental. There are TNB sounds that were utterly direct and rolling straight forward with the power of an avalanche that, once put into action, cannot be stopped.

Only on the 7 inch are original DSM sounds used. They are all acoustic in origin, domestic recordings, not actually played/performed, but set in motion in one way or another. Things that were thought to play TNB on their own behalf. Electricity meters, badly working plugs, kitchen tools, etc.

Chapters were created in the flux wherever a change occurred - significant enough were the conventional becomes strangely bizarre. Sounds that could be considered as solos opposed to ensembles, sounds that stay up-front, opposed to others that are rather an unspecific amalgam, a quizzical mixture of ingredients. Miniatures of evident patterns became perceptible, imposing themselves, but remaining static. A display of possibilities: but mostly without any particular progression. These came in by transferring significant elements from one chapter to the following one independently of the quality of the sound, actually imposing it regardless of what was going on sound-wise.

A collaboration at a distance, but not with the person involved at one’s side. A negotiation with each other's mutual silence, insinuating ones personal strategies into one of the other. Infectious and epidemic.

Enough garbling. Listen!
Guido Huebner

In the words of Das Synthetische Mischgewebe (DSM) founder Guido Huebner, a collaboration with The New Blockaders (TNB) seemed to "have been precisely the right thing to come around at the right moment." I posit that this may very well be the case, but despite the fact that both projects have been active for over twenty-five years and have both become stalwarts of the European experimental music underground, it is an otherwise odd pairing. While the bulk of DSM's work has been concept-oriented and decidedly artistic multi-media compositions, TNB have become the de facto poster-children for anti-art nihilism. Perhaps because, or in spite, of these fundamental differences this project works as well as an alchemical wedding. Huebner is at the helm here, so it's not a collaboration in the sense that the two groups got together and made a record. He's taken the raw material of TNB and sculpted it into a meticulously constructed musique-concret composition much like a remix artist would. If you're looking for another chapter in the full-blown noise tomes of TNB, you may be disappointed. I for one relish the way that the noise is placed in an entirely new context, with equal blasts of silence that are just as powerful and even give the harsh textures a renewed significance. The proper listening sequence involves alternating sides of the twelve-inch and seven-inch records, but I've chosen to discuss each record independently for reasons I hope to make apparent in the process.

The LP comes housed in a heavy-stocked color offset-printed laminated jacket and contains both the first and last parts (sides A and D) of "The Monosyllabic Bicycles Tri-Coloured Quadruples." For both parts Huebner employs only the sounds of TNB; some exclusively prepared for this project and others culled from existing recordings. Despite the track listings (which are vaguely demarcated), both sides also flow as self-contained singular works at just over twenty minutes each. Despite DSM's Teutonic origins, I sense an affinity more with the French aesthetic towards electro-acoustic music whether it be the classic work of Pierre Schaeffer or such later practitoners as Lieutenant Caramel. Side A subdues the trademark noise of TNB without rendering it impotent. Instead the textures are placed under a sonic microscope in which all the scrapes and hisses are exposed at a molecular level. Bursts of machine noise and percussive rustlings are erected like crystalline pillars of acousmatic beauty enshrouded in a landscape of quiet clouds. Even at the music's most dense moments, there is a flow and undeniable sense of attentiveness; this is not sloppy work, but absolutely dramatic. Every sound is presented on its own terms and is simultaneously related to what precedes and follows it. Generally nothing is ever acoustically or electronically obscured as the cut-and-paste work of Huebner actually further illuminates the timbres of the source material. Top- shelf concrete work that ends, appropriately enough, with a flourish of classic TNB noise.

The second side (side D) of the LP kicks off with isolated bursts of junk percussion and is punctuated by small actions of noise that are both brought into play structurally through the use of silence as a compositional construct. Avalanches of violent sound are kept in check by the context in which they emerge. A squeaking wheel is juxtaposed over a malfunctioning machine part while an erstwhile carpenter works his day away in vain. Handicapped locusts chirp their last gasps amidst the impending doom of a nascent summer heatwave in a cloud of DDT. At times the editing work almost calls to mind The Hafler Trio's work circa “A Thirsty Fish.” It's clever yet foreboding with a remote sense of optimism amidst an imminent apocalypse so to speak. Spiky barbs of sounds are bandied about that accumulate to create a wall of noise threatening to eventually take the work over, but are subdued by oil barrel percussion edits. Quite an impressive composition.

The diminutive record bears the distinction of including source recordings made by Huebner: “electricity meters, badly working plugs, kitchen tools, etc.” I imagine that the use of these sounds is intended to forge an aesthetic kinship with TNB. At any rate, it works. Side B is just over eight minutes of raw collage music. The dynamic interplay amongst the dispersion of the various sounds is creative and dramatic. Again, noise and silence meet in harmony and coexist on equal footing. The latter half of the side tends to be a bit noisier and has a more consistent flow of material until the very end flirts with silence and harsher textures bringing the whole thing full circle. Side C clocks in at nearly seven minutes in length and is aesthetically more akin to the second side of the LP. Every noise is exquisite and placed meticulously in relation to its relative quietude. Honestly, nothing more can be said about the work here except that an old steam radiator seems to be gasping its last breath. Not a bad thing to hear. In all likelihood this edition, as is to be expected from such artists, is already sold out. There are only 305 numbered copies of the set (97 on clear vinyl). The quality of the pressings and full-color packaging are impressive enough, but the music really stands out far beyond typical noise recordings. Here's to hoping that these folks keep on keeping on, regardless of whether or not they collaborate again. Top-notch effort, mates.
Heathen Harvest

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The New Blockaders - Epater Les Bourgeois (Kubitsuri Tapes, 1985 (2009 reissue))

1 Untitled 22:31
2 Untitled 22:31

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Andrea Neumann & Annette Krebs - Rotophormen (Charhizma, 2000)

1 Rotophorm 1 9:30
2 Rotophorm 2 6:33
3 Rotophorm 3 5:16
4 Rotophorm 4 9:02
5 Rotophorm 5 2:58
6 Rotophorm 6 6:48

On first listen to this collaboration between electroacoustic guitarist Annette Krebs and “inner piano” player Andrea Neumann, I am immediately reminded of Virgil Thomson’s semi-infamous critique of John Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano: “a ping qualified by a thud.” Despite it’s pithy and almost dismissive nature, Thompson’s summary precisely captures the dialogue between the pitched and unpitched voices rising from Cage’s metal and wood piano string treatments – a dialogue that would later blossom into the lingua franca of free improvisation. More than fifty years after the Sonatas and Interludes , Neumann and Krebs speak a rendition of the “ping versus thud” language so radically evolved that the resultant collection of industrial grind and crackle bears only passing resemblance to the tinkling Orientalisms of their Cagean ancestor. Heaven only knows what Thomson would make of Rotophormen , a record filled with sounds not unlike a dilapidated boiler room full of randomly chiming antique alarm clocks – all wrought from the seemingly harmless acoustic guitar and piano.

To refer to the instruments played by Krebs and Neumann as simply an acoustic guitar and piano, however, is to be grossly misleading. Krebs rests her acoustic guitar face-up on her lap, outfits it with a bounty of contact microphones and pickups routed through signal processors and a mixing desk, and assaults both its strings and body with steel wool, hand-held fans, and more. Neumann’s “inner piano” consists of the piano strings stripped of keyboard and frame, a raw sounding board for her relentless barrage of manual scrapes, slaps, and metallic interjections. Like Krebs, Neumann litters her instrument with numerous sensors that amplify microscopic movements across mistreated strings into richly textured sonorities that could easily be mistaken for laptop squiggles. In the case of both players, the sound palette wrung from these treated instruments represents a photo negative of the instruments’ traditional role – the resonance of the guitar’s body and the open piano string inverted to mostly pitch-free gestures of Morse code static and rotor scrape. Only the most fleeting allusion to the instrumental raw materials emerges: the occasional open string rings briefly from the piano, a hint of string scrapes from the guitar. What’s left is a swarm of metallic insects clawing at sheet metal, a malfunctioning radio heard under high-tension power lines – perhaps both at once.

Rotophormen lists six tracks (each given a simple number designation) on its sleeve, but the track divisions may as well not exist – the ever-changing musical topography defies simple partitions. Neumann and Krebs’ noise concoctions shun the harmony-derived structures of tension and release in favor a constant exploration of the unique instant; the resulting effects is that of opening and closing the same door, yet discovering a different landscape of pings and thuds behind it with each examination. Similarly, the carefully regulated uniformity of generated sounds contributes to the impression of large-scale unity. At points, the sounds become so detached from their source that it becomes difficult to impossible to tell which player conjures a particular white noise burst or muted rattle, an effect magnified by the virtual space manipulations afforded by electronic treatments. Ultimately, this uniformity begins to work against the duo; reliance on the same mode of communication, though effective, occasionally leads Neumann and Krebs into redundant dead ends. Such dead ends, however, are relatively few and far between – for the most part, Neumann and Krebs inhabit an environment of constantly overturning noise, guided by an internal logic that escapes narrative convention in favor of intuitive fluctuations of tone color and dynamic.

As for the sounds themselves – metal-on-metal scratches and otherworldly rumbles, delivered with an unaffected precision that befits their industrial character. Generally the most active of the players, Neumann offers up a diverse array of dragged chain scuffs, wound string scratches, and bursts of steam jet white noise that create a complex inner world of buzz and rattle seemingly without origin. For contrast, Neumann conjures dense harmonic clusters from the blades of electric fans on open strings or electronically sustains a resonant hum from the sounding board until it crumbles beneath flurries of mechanical din. Krebs, on the other hand, prefers to fill the negative space between Neumann’s more overt gestures with crunchy rustles wrought from steel wool or subsonic bass pulses coaxed from the amplified guitar body. Krebs should not be mistaken for a passive player, however, as the points at which her electroacoustic guitar takes the forefront are every bit as captivating as Neumann’s more aggressive fare – whether it be creating a thicket of bristly static on the first track or summoning a crowd of chattering crickets at the album’s conclusion. Together, they create networks of mechanical noise alternately evoking the sharp-edged click and miniscule spring groan of stopwatch or the strained pulses of failing drill press. It’s a dense and claustrophobic affair, yet the inhuman surface glare created by Neumann and Krebs’ unforgiving manipulations masks a wealth of atomic detail within each disembodied blurt and squeal. For those willing to dig beneath its spiky exterior, Rotophormen offers a glimpse of the twitching alien sound shapes lurking beneath the duo’s suggested clamorous machinery.

Perhaps this truly is the music of Virgil Thomson’s nightmares, his “ping qualified by a thud” stretched to its coldest post-human extremes. Judging by the ease and fluidity of Neumann and Krebs’ interactions, however, we may be more apt to view the rattling noisescapes of Rotophormen as a logical extension of the new language Thompson inadvertently prophesied more than half a century ago. Though the mechanical environment called to mind may lack human warmth and sentimentality, it is not without its elements of fascination or even flickers of beauty – often evoking a feeling akin to the haunted quality that hovers around abandoned factories. Though Thomson may have disapproved, Krebs and Neumann’s Rotophormen presents a dialog in pings and thuds as consistently interesting as it is remote, unlocking the hidden instrumental potential hinted at in Thomson’s peculiarly farsighted observation.
Stylus Magazine

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Simon Cummings - The Ceiling Stared At Me But I Beheld Only The Stars (self release, 2010)

The latest release from composer Simon Cummings is a new 32-minute electronic work, the Ceiling stared at me but i beheld only the Stars. The piece takes as its starting point the intricate stonework found on the ceiling of the Quire in Tewkesbury Abbey. The central idea explored in the work is encapsulated in this quotation from George Herbert’s The Elixer:

A man that looks on glasse,
On it may stay his eye;
Or if he pleaseth, through it passe,
And then the heav’n espie.

More specifically, the piece is concerned with notions of imposed restriction (the ‘ceiling’ of the title), with the concomitant spiritual reaction to—& transcendence beyond—such blind barriers. This is heard most prominently in the work’s fundamental conflict between two types of material, one noise-based, the other pitched & bell-like.

the Ceiling stared at me but i beheld only the Stars is dedicated to Michael Perry Goodman.

This release is only available in the form of a free digital download, in a variety of audio formats. To download, please visit http://simoncummings.bandcamp.com. Due to the extreme frequency range used in the piece, lossless (FLAC/Apple Lossless) is VERY strongly recommended. Download includes high-resolution artwork, PDF digital booklet & selection of desktop wallpapers.

Copies of the first two CDs, Triptych, May/July 2009 & The Stuff of Memories are still available; for information, to hear excerpts & to order a copy, please visit www.simoncummings.com/shop. Both of these can also now be purchased as digital downloads from the Bandcamp site.

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new Ubeboet on Moving Furniture Records

Archival is the first vinyl release for Ubeboet.
For this album Ubeboet worked with several field-recordings and created his own sound world with it. While at times there are hints of musique-concrete masters like Nurse With Wound at the same time ethereal moments that in a distant remind of the classic Popol Vuh work. But while this inspiration can be heard Ubeboet has his own sound. As a true master he creates his own minimal sound world.
Archival is released as vinyl only release limited to 200.

ABOUT Ubeboet
Ubeboet is the musical project of M.A. Tolosa from Madrid, Spain. The focus in his music is on drone structures and field-recordings, but also contains elements of musique-concrete. In his sound he knows to create rich dense textures of sound, while staying on the minimal side of music.
In the past Ubeboet has released several releases both physical as digital on labels such as NonVisialObjects, Winds Measure Recordings, Test Tube among many others.
In the past he has worked with musicians such as Asher, Dale Lloyd and Pablo Reche.
On his own internationally acclaimed label Con-V he has released several physical and digital releases by renowned artists such as Jos Smolders, Francisco López and Christopher McFall.

stream one track here

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Cordell Klier - Espionage (Gears Of Sand, 2007)

1 Untitled One 0:21
2 Untitled Two 5:00
3 Untitled Three 4:04
4 Untitled Four 4:31
5 Untitled Five 4:12
6 Untitled Six 2:00
7 Untitled Seven 3:38
8 Untitled Eight 5:08
9 Untitled Nine 3:56
10 Untitled Ten 2:28
11 Untitled Eleven 10:00
12 Untitled Twelve 4:29

Many and various are the credentials and designations paraded by Cordell Klier, who appears to have been around the media arts and musical genre block a few times. Experimental sound artist is, for our purposes, the most salient signage for this digi-art-punk-pop proteus, his latest incarnation coming on the back of a gamut-run of 90s-00s genres, taking in various types of pop and a few tips of hop. Klier has alighted upon minimal drone and glitch as his currently preferred mixer flavors, pushing Espionage into the area of what he describes as ‘cold pop music.’ He brings to bear his predilection for minimal drone and Raster-ized microsound and glitchscapes on a series of emptied-out virtual song structures with occasional spoken word interleaving. The result is a kind of brittle cybernetic nearly-pop that dips its own-bristled brush largely into the palette of another’s stick-figure sensuality and freeze-dried (r)emotion (12k/Line). The artist’s personality emerges towards the end as a somewhat arch, even threatening entity. Glitches, drones, twangs, and found sounds cohabitate, though the notoriously annoying yowl of a siamese cat resonates the longest. Espionage is a bit like the difficult kid in the class, in an idiosyncratic, occasionally discomfiting collection that both compels and repels, sometimes simultaneously.
e|i magazine

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Ben Wildenhaus - Instrumental Quaalude (podcast)

Reçu un mail de Benjamin Wildenhaus / Received a mail from Benjamin Wildenhaus:

I had been composing the instrumental music and structures for the post-rock band Federation X when I started to explore improvisation and loose structure through country music, Arabic music, and other traditional and experimental musics.
I continue to record and perform in Brooklyn, NY using a variety of instruments: fretted string instruments, keyed instruments, pedal steel, etc.
These are the things that interest me as a performer/recorder:
0) the product of all instruments is some noise. It is always different.
1) creating 'folk' melodies that will be disbursed in various musical settings until the author is no longer known.
2) exploring the imagined realm of the musical Orient that the west has created. This music has no relation to music from asian or middle eastern regions, instead stemming from the French image, "Kradoudja, ma maitresse," and the American image from Ellingtonia, "Caravan."
3) playing quietly and creating useful music. Performance venue behavior is predictable and useless: audience watch the performer; performer perform. The expectation forces the performer to make choices maybe he or she should not. Allow room for gradual musical/sonic development or disintegration and for subtle physical encroachment of sound within the performance space.
4) intricate or deliberate compositions and recordings are for physical mediums such as vinyl, cd, cassette. Incidental recordings, improvisations, and composition fragments are for fluid, disposable mediums like the mp3 or podcast.
The podcast Instrumental Quaalude is an effort to capture such incidental recordings, improvisations, and composition fragments as they happen. There is too much music available on the internet for a listener to successfully collect and preserve. The mp3s delivered through this podcast are disposable, to be heard once, to be useful only in the moment of their capture and their release, their recording and playback. Then they recede into the annals of internet hell, alienated from virality by a lack of clicks.

Little selection of his works:

"Week Twenty-seven": Piano plays a 4/4 chordal backing. Destructed sine waves ruin accordion melody. Bass enters to compliment the piano while the sine waves attempt to ruin everything. For Johanne Fück. (4 minutes, 12 seconds).

"Week Nineteen": Week Nineteen first oscillates between Dbm/Ab and Abm/E. In the bridge the chords Ebm7/Db, Gm, Db/Gb repeat before returning to the previous two chords. There is also a melody. Performed by SG. (5 minutes, 10 seconds)

"Week One": The decaying tones of the SG provide the repetition for slipping pedal steel notes. Performed by showbud pedal steel and SG electric guitar. (5 minutes, 13 seconds).

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Steinbrüchel - Granulat Live Series: 00sieben/contacT8 (Synchron, 2000)

Number 4 in a 6 singles series featuring sections of the granulat concerts, which took place in ug (> katakombe) in zurich, switzerland.

Side A recorded: 01.19.2000
Side B recorded: 02.09.2000

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Xarhope - Musique Pour Bande Dessinée (PandaFuzz, 2010)

In the world of internet music, xarhope seems to be a rather popular name. Xarhope is Samuel Ufus and after several months of emails and a few different albums I am happy to present to you musique pour bande dessine´e. When attempting to select a new pandafuzz release rarely am I looking for melodic elements that appeal to me, or even an aesthetic that connects them all. What I am really after is the attraction of something new and in the case of xarhope every album is completely new. One never knows what to expect and one is consistently surprised with the results. While you may not be immediately attracted to the busking free jazz nature of this new xarhope album….I invite you to open your windows….bring in the sounds of the streets or forest….and play this album at a very high volume.

A brief description from xarhope:
“…sounds recorded in the street and at home in different cities in arab countries like lebanon jordan and cairo, I did some kind of rude zen jams with musicians and non musicians, just people i meet in the places i stayed… we used short instruments as jawharp, bells, harmonica, tibetan bowl, castanholas, metal plates, toys and other objects that we can find in the kitchen and in the living room… the sounds from the street were recorded in cairo…”
PandaFuzz

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The Glittering Hand - Impossible Forms (17 Sons records, 2010)

1 Active brains 08:14
2 Mishakenfu Tamal 04:53
3 Zaer Fershinyul 08:44
4 Missing feet 10:33
5 Help 04:31

This is the first release of The Glittering Hand, a new project that can be described as acousmatico-glitch noises and parasiteech interferences through mental drones fields with evolving saturation.
17 Sons Records

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Eric La Casa / Tarab - Les Vibrations Dans la Masse De Son Roulement / Utility (Compost and Height, 2009)

1 Les Vibrations Dans la Masse De Son Roulement 10:04
2 Utility 10:00

Eric La Casa - Les vibrations dans la masse de son roulement
"une masse qui ne se détruit pas, une seule masse compacte, un qui se tient ensemble, un ensemble, une vibration dans la masse, un moteur, qui ne s'effiloche pas, qui ne disparaît pas, une masse tenue, le déroulement tenu, le roulement, la masse est en roulement..." C.Tarkos, "Anachronisme"

Landing platforms, truss, tracks, steps, handrail, ... the complexity of this mechanism is a real opportunity for any listener. Even though the original components (wood...) are progressively replaced with modern ones, like the elevator this machinery still sounds like a heroic invention from the Industrial Revolution (second half of the XIX th century). And while the technology evolves, the idea remains the same.

When I first started listening to these systems, 10 years ago, I paid attention to the concept: mechanical transport of one's body through the city. Opposite to the compound like elevator (a closed space), escalators provide you with open space. Moving in one direction, like traveling through a movie (a cinematic vision), your body is carried slowly into a specific city location. For this short time (from few seconds to several minutes) you are completely devoted "to slide" through the city. Suddenly, your body moves from the static ground... you escalate.

Tarab: utility
Compiled from a series of recordings collected on wanderings through the northern suburbs of Melbourne. The city heard through holes in the ground. Various sized utility holes. Rather than generating a sound of their own, most of the holes I came across act as a trap or filter for the sounds of the city. Their locations, what time I found them and their particular sound qualities dictated what sounds I heard, or in many cases did not hear.
Compost and Height

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Roland Kayn - Tektra (Barooni, 1981 (1997 reissue))

1.1 Tanar - Part 1 25:56
1.2 Tanar - Part 2 17:24
1.3 Etoral 29:29
2.1 Khyra - Part 1 27:17
2.2 Khyra - Part 2 17:33
2.3 Khyra - Part 3 24:45
3.1 Tarego I 14:20
3.2 Tarego II 11:57
3.3 Tarego III 21:12
3.4 Rhenit 23:59
4.1 Amarun I 20:03
4.2 Amarun II - Part 1 25:45
4.3 Amarun II - Part 2 26:42

Roland Kayn was born in 1933 in Germany. He composed his first orchestral piece while only 17, and three years later composed Kammerkonzert, which won first prize in the Festival of Twentieth Century Music in Japan in 1958.

Sometime during 1956, Kayn created a system of composition which paralleled contemporary ideas in information theory. He applied statistical methodology to determine musical characteristics like pitch, duration and
density of the tones and chords. Kayn felt that the music of the future would be compositions in which 'all the sounds are points in space, without melody or rhythm', citing Stockhausen's Spiel Fur Orchestra `as a perfect
example. It wasn't long before he started modifying the tuning of the 'unison' strings in a piano to avail himself of the frequencies which occur between the standard half tones. Not only were new fundamental notes created, but the entire overtone series of the instruments became an enormous spectrum of sound. So it was that Kayn got closer and closer to his idea of cybernetic music.

At this point, and as contradictory as it may seem, Kayn started to suggest ways of working in which composers themselves could be somehow excluded from the compositional process. Not surprisingly, this idea alienated him
from his contemporaries who probably didn't want to relinquish their authorship and consequent funding. It wasn't long before he was excluded from the concert stage either, and it was after a short sojurn with the improvisational group Gruppo d'Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, that he made the choices that were to determine his methods of working from then on.

At that time, musical events in a composition were still largely defined by the composer. Kayn was primarily interested in a form of music which regulated itself. He started designing complex systems of instrumentation
in which he practically gave up his control over the resulting piece, abandoning the narrative elements and all the asprects usually associated with the ideas of 'authorship'. His scores started looking more and more like abstract, mathematically derived paintings, with increasingly more freedom being allowed the performers.

His electronic pieces start with a defined network of equipment. All conceivable events within that network are collated and then used to develop a system of signals and commands which are then incorporated into the triggers and controllers of the machines. All of this preparation took much longer to complete that the compositions themselves, which were recorded to tape once and once only !

Tektra, a 4CD set is the 16th release on Amsterdam based label Barooni, and it is a re-release of the latest availible work (originally on vinyl in 1982) by Kayn. This set was mastered from the original tapes used in the
manufacture of the records. Consequently, these quite lengthy pieces were faded in and out so they would fall within the time restrictions inherent to that medium. As a result of this, the various compositions which
comprise Tektra are themselves sub-divided.The music slowly swells from silence. Each of the compositions has it's own unique character and all of them are amazingly unique examples of what can be done with a drone. You'll hear sounds not heard before-in Khyra the sound of all the ringing bells on earth alternate with five billion voices
close to the right note (you're floating in space, of course, and listening to the sound of the whole planet). The industrial backfed repetition of Tarego, which eventually shatters into it's individual components. In Amarun, we are suspended on a synapseweb of overtones inside a Tibetan monks skull. It's magnificent, more now than then and certainly zen.

Barooni were the first to release the works of Tommy Koner way back when and have played the greatest part in reviving interest in the almost forgotten minimal music discoveries of Charlemagne Palestine. Special congratulations to them for this beautiful package and for their care and continuing love of this medium. Most certainly one to watch...
Vital Weekly

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Lights on D'incise

d'incise, né en l983, est membre du collectif genevois audioactivity fondée en 2000. en 2002, il commence à produire different type de musique électronique, du dub à l'electronica, et s'égarant dangereusement sur les voies expérimentalles de l'électroacoustique. son monde est fait de fractures sonores, de crépitations névralgiques, d'atmosphères mélancoliques et d'une fascination non-dissimulée pour la rouille et les rythmes qui s'effritent.

Après un cd autoproduit en 2004, il se mets à diffuser sa musique sur divers netlabels tel Zyogen ou Test Tube.

Par ailleurs il pratique l'improvisation libre, explorant là des mondes à la limite du bruitisme et de la démence, livrant une musique instable, proche de l'électroacoustique, en travaillant sur les textures, les cassures, les tensions, le spectre, l'ambiance, il recherche un mode de jeu réactif, en essayant de se soustraire à la rigueur de la machine. par le live sampling, il tente de briser la distinction entre l'accoustiques et l'ordinateur, brouillant les perceptions.
Diatribes (formation ouverte avec le batteur Cyril Bondi) et Karst (quartet avec Bondi, Luc Muller et Abstral Compost) sont ses principaux groupes. Ces projets reguliers ou d'autres occasionnels ont inclut des musiciens tel barry guy, keith row, jason kahn, tomas korber, christian weber, jacques demierre, norbert moslang, ernesto rodrigues, johann bourquenez, le car de thon, hannah marshall, rafal mazur, keir neuringher, HKM+, Fred gloria et les autres, abdul moimême, hernani faustino, joao pedro viegas, christian graf, nicolas sordet, johanne bourquenez, tzii, dragos tara, jonas kocher, benoit moreau, laurent brutin, pieros SK, delpine horst.

d'incise présent également un live solo, plus connoté electronica, dans lequel il opère une suite de fluctuations ou se croisent pulsions rythmiques, mélodies naïves et vagues de bruits pour un set pour dancefloor disloqué.
D'incise

d'incise, born in 1983, is member of the Audioactivity, music & visual collective founded in 2000 in Geneva (CH). In 2002 he starded to produce different kinds of electronic music, from dub to electronica, dangerously sliding to the more experimental ways of electroacoustic. His world is made with sound fractures, nevralgic crepitations, melancolic atmospheres and a non-dissimulated fascination for rust and faded rhythms.

After one self-produced cd in 2004, he started to release his music on various netlabels as Zymogen or Test Tube.

Beside he pratice free improvisation, using laptop, live treatments and various objects & contact mics, Diatribes (open formation with drummer Cyril Bondi) and Karst (quartet with Bondi, Luc Muller and Abstral Compost) are his two main improvised projects. These regular and others occasionnal projets had inclued musicians as barry guy, keith row, jason kahn, tomas korber, christian weber, jacques demierre, norbert moslang, ernesto rodrigues, johann bourquenez, le car de thon, hannah marshall, rafal mazur, keir neuringher, HKM+, Fred gloria et les autres, abdul moimême, hernani faustino, joao pedro viegas, christian graf, nicolas sordet, johanne bourquenez, tzii, dragos tara, benoit moreau, jonas kocher, laurent brutin, pieros SK, delpine horst.

d'incise play also a solo live act,more into electronica, where he operate fluctuations suites of rythmic pulsions, simple melodies and noise waves for a destroyed dancefloor.

he also coordinate the insubordinations netlabel, dedicate to improvised music, collectivly coordinate the audioactiviste netlabel, do some graphic and screenprinting design and works on sound installations.
D'incise

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Some News From Small Things On Sunday & On The Wrong Planet

Nous avons déjà parlé des deux projets de Henrik Bagner, en solo sous le nom de On The Wrong Planet ou bien en duo, avec Claus Poulsen, sous celui de Small Things on Sunday, chacun sort un CDr sur Striate Cortex, jeune label mais au catalogue déjà prestigieux.... / We have already discussed from the two projects of Henrik Bagner, solo under the name On The Wrong Planet, or in duo with Claus Poulsen under the name Small Things on Sunday, each released a CDr on Striate Cortex a young label but with an already prestigious catalog .. ..

On The Wrong Planet - First Visit (Striate Cortex, 2010)
The only new name here is On The Wrong Planet, but its the solo project of Henrik Bagner of Small Things On Sunday. Eight pieces in just under one hour. Since there is no information we have to do some guessing here. I think there is fair amount of field recordings going on here, sound processing (laptops are assumed) and as for instruments… guitars maybe, some sound effects. The outcome is along the lines of experimental side of ambient and drone music. I think some of these tracks are a bit long for what they are. No doubt they are set out to create ‘hypnosis’ or ‘trance’, but there is not always the right amount of variation in these pieces. The shorter are the best ones in this lot, with the haunting ‘You Can’t Break Me’ as the outstanding piece and the longest, ‘Revisit’, being the weakest link. Overall I thought this wasn’t bad, but it needed some more shaping. Edit down the best bits a bit more and the cosmic nightmare will fully take shape.
Vital Weekly

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After dunking my head in the lavatory of a recent CD-r batch, it looks very much like dark ambient styled music is too hit-and-miss a genre to ever provide a good run of really strong full album releases. The palette is so narrow that it’s instantly, and always, straining at the seams of cliché the very minute it begins to spin. Too often it lapses into shadowy safe territory, and then just refuses to budge. Thankfully the Copenhagen based duo of Small Things On Sundays aren’t shackled by the postures inherent in the genre tag, though they share the same cloakroom.

Things begin absolutely outstandingly with the opening “Powerstation”, a drag of five minute moody stasis that confronts the clock – intimidating time to stand still. The next two tracks summon up remembrances of moody, early Warp, The Caretaker, apple-cored-out brass instruments and the shudder of reality just beyond the listener’s fingertips. The mid album blip of “Cavernous” shows how easy it is to slip over the line into ho-hum, being as it is a piece of overlong, incoming mild fog tipped over into boring horrorshow drones. The final two tracks, a couple of very interesting moment dappled slabs, definitely show that Small Things On Sundays are up on the plinth, while the rest of the crowd are cackling around the burning dumpsters of dark ambient drone.
Foxy Digitalis

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Yuri Kalendarev - Sound Sculptures (Die Schachtel, 2007)

1 Dream 4:37
2 Kursk I 3:51
3 Kursk II 19:51

Belonging to the generation of underground “non-conformist” artists, the dissidents of the 70s, Yuri Kalendarev has employed various media to develop the outcome of his research that explore the intersection of sculpture and sound vibrations. He came upon the sonic possibilities of his work after 30 years of working with granite, land art and light projects.
His Sound Plates are forged out of acoustic bronze compounds using hammers and fire, in order to generate a large range of frequency oscillations that allow multiple interactions with the listener’s inner being. Yuri’s bronze “Sound Plates” are designed to create massive low-frequency drones and midrange howls, capable of creating a wide variety of deep percussive sounds. In redefining the concept of sculpture in pure sound terms, the work of Yuri Kalendarev extends an explores a new aural experience beyond the sound itself, an investigation into the realm of “pure acoustics”.
The performances captured on this CD represent the crystallization of the physicality of Kalendarev’s sound sculpture - a set of ten resonating sound plates - his attitude to rhythm, to the persistence of sound itself, and his ability to create an atmosphere of deep concentration, silent communion, and mystery.
Die Schachtel

The first “affordable” entry into die schachtel’s “art series” - a series of subdued metal-resonance studies performed by russian artist yuri kalendarev on his “sound plates” - “ten resonating bronze sculptures forged with hammer and fire” ... completely mysterious, fits right in with the grand canon of audible art from the brothers baschet through robert rutman et.al. typically lavish item to boot... highly recommended.
Miramoglu

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Klaus Wiese - Neptun - Tibetan Singing Bowls (Aquamarin, 1989)

Neptun is the emerald between the semi-precious stones of human desire and aspirations. Cloudy, ambigeous, deceptive and yet charged with the magnetism of hidden light, which is set free, when form dissolves.

Here ordinary "music" dissolves into sound and is born again as music of a higher order in the ear and heart of someone, who has passed through the gates of form and concept.
The sound of this recording is generated from the accumulated overtones of tibetan singing bowls. Their unique sound quality expresses easily the fluorescence of the neptunian spheres.
Klauswiese.com

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Nubiferous - Behind The Megalithic Walls (Censored Productions, 2010)

1. Inshore Dolmen 2:12
2. Breast From The Ancient Water 12:24
3. Nightwalker 5:12
4. Towers Of The Black Sea Dragon 10:30
5. Into The Asylum Of Basatan 12:43
6. Speos Of Deep Ones 11:00
7. Yaddith Gho 12:55
8. The Opaque Vision 4:45
9. Behind The Megalithic Walls 14:46
10. Nitrogen Narcosis (bonus) 4:08
11. Creatures Of THe Void 5:37

Nous avons déjà parlé d'András qui réalise sa propre ambient sous le pseudonyme d'Indo, il lance maintenant son netlabel, Censored Productions / We already spoke from András who realize his own ambient music under the moniker Indo, he now launches his own netlabel, Censored Productions...

Nubiferous is a dark ambient project from North Caucasus.The idea of creating was by AD,after split-up of their main band Noah's Flood (atmospheric death metal).The main influences on Nubiferous:mountains,woods and theirs mystic aspects,esoteric and paranormal themes...Nubiferous combined own atmosphere through dark ambient,fields recordings and drone soundscapes....

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Five Thousand Spirits - A Tapestry For Sourcerers (Sempiterna Mutatio, 1995)

1 From Sea To Sea 2:18
2 Enter, So Far From This Sky 10:37
3 Alphamantra 4:37
4 Onyx 6:38
5 Eskdalemuir 16:39
6 Lais 7:57
7 Haat-Lunis 8:00
8 Limahians 7:25

Derriere le nom Five Thousand Spirits officient Alio Die, Runes Order and Raffaele Serra. Cette musique ne depaysera donc pas les amateurs du label Hic Sunt Leones et du sous label Sempiterna Mutatio. Par rapport aux productions de Alio Die, on notera ici une propension a' explorer des voies plus mystiques et rituelles. "Enter, so far from this sky", long titre au developpement lent evoque un rituel imaginaire. Runes Order apporte par touches parcimonieuses ses nappes de synthes et notes cristallines. "Hatt-lunis" est a' ce titre un joyau de lumiere diaphane, propice a' de douces derives mentales hypnagogiques. "Onyx" vous plonge dans une nuit cosmique epaisse, zebree de perturbations magnetiques lointaines. Pas de doute, nos trois mystagogues ont don de vous enroler dans leur univers onirique. Laissez-vous faire, le voyage en vaut la peine.
revue et corrigée

This is a collaboration project with Alio Die, Runes Order and Raffaele Serra. Low drones beneath evocative motivic figures, with wisps of mystical synth sweeps that seem to come out of the deeper parts of the universe, bone-chilling natural sounds and summoning primitive drums, beckon us to follow on a long transcendental journey. From this point onwards, we find ourselves continually drawn into the spacious atmosphere of the music. As we float over the vast cosmic seas, unearthly sonorous monuments rise above us, piercing the dark celestial blanket, forcing an opening for the spiritual light to shine through. All is shed in a bright, while light now. All is peaceful and quiet.We have entered the world of inexistence. A wonderful out-of-body experience!
TDR

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Monos - A Natural Discordance (Nil, 2000)

1 Untitled 22:12
2 Untitled 32:19
3 Untitled 6:29

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