Ever Had is the solo project of Kompleksi member Everhad (a.k.a. Perttu Piirto), here in its live incarnation with Jouka Mattila (where the guys are obviously over-caffeinated?). This video is taken from Ever Had's record release gig in 2000 or 20001. The song can be found from Ever Had's CD Dejoy (relishCd001).
Perttu Piirto also has another project, called Melkoinen. Check out Melkoinen @ MySpace.
Furthermore, Perttu made his own comment to a recent domestic news event, when the sales manager of Audi cars for Finland made some controversial comments on women, comparing them to cars, thus angering many and eventually getting sacked for his opinions. The clip also features Tina Ulevik, Kompleksi's video director.
N&B Research Digest has three wonderful archival releases out now as digital downloads
Swissair: "15. joulukuuta 1981"
”15. joulukuuta 1981” (”December 15th, 1981”) was recorded during one afternoon in Helsinki and first released as a cassette in early 1982. At this point the six 16-year old members of Swissair, whose earlier music had been inspired by punk and new wave groups like PiL, Wire, Chrome and MX-80 Sound, were becoming acquainted with the history of avant-garde music and immediately started experimenting with its ideas while having practically no traditional playing skills at all. At least Anton Webern’s music in which "silences matter as much as sounds" was discussed before pressing the rec button and starting to improvise... READ MORE and LISTEN TO PREVIEWS: http://www.nbresearchdigest.com/15
Jungle: "Live in Leningrad"
Jungle was formed in 1983 in Leningrad Rock Club’s new wave milieu, continuing a local tradition of giving groups names that had to with animals and domestication. Jungle was an exception among Aquarium, Zoo and other prominent underground groups in Leningrad in another respect: its music was purely instrumental and the musicians cited European ”avant-progressive” Rock In Opposition musicians and American proponents of Ornette Coleman’s harmolodics as their influences instead of The Velvet Underground or British new wave groups... READ MORE and LISTEN TO PREVIEWS: http://www.nbresearchdigest.com/leningrad
F.R.U.I.T.S.: "Studio Recordings Vol. 1"
F.R.U.I.T.S. is a duo formed by Alexei Borisov and Pavel Zhagun in Moscow in 1992. Borisov had started in the early 1980’s as a guitarist in Centre, the very first Russian new wave band, and later formed his own experimental group Notchnoi Prospekt. Zhagun’s background was quite different: he had been a brass player in the touring group of Soviet Union’s biggest pop star, Alla Pugachova, and wrote lyrics for her and other so-called "official" pop stars, but gradually turned into an enthusiast of contemporary academic composition. Together Borisov and Zhagun started to make hypnotic, musique concrète-inspired pieces on samplers, and theoretised about concepts like optical sounds, "reframing", "noise reconstruction" and ”no music”... READ MORE and LISTEN TO PREVIEWS: http://www.nbresearchdigest.com/studio
All our download albums are available both as best-quality mp3's (for the tech-oriented: LAME/extreme quality, no copy protection) and, at a slightly higher price, as lossless flac files (= CD quality).
ELSEWHERE ON THE NET Alexei Borisov & Anton Nikkilä have a track called "Pink Bread" on the download-only compilation "Sound Canvas 1 - Compilation of sound art, minimal and improvised music" made available for free by Moscow's Mikroton label and featuring Alva Noto, Frank Bretschneider, Lawrence English and many others: http://www.mikroton.net/md1.html
Anton Nikkilä has also contributed a track entitled "Lasijauholaivakeikka Revisited" on the free download-only compilation "Fifteen Sounds of the War on the Poor, Vol. 1" released by the Los Angeles-based Public Record and featuring Ultra-red, Terre Thaemlitz, Alejandra and Aeron, Christopher DeLaurenti, and more: http://publicrec.org/archive/2-06/2-06-002/2-06-002.html
NEW ITEMS IN OUR OWN WEBSHOP include the Lithuanian compilation "Un/Typical" (featuring Alexei Borisov & Anton Nikkilä), the Slovenian compilation "Fabriksampler V2" (featuring Alexei Borisov & Tania Stene) and the album "M S :4" by the Moscow group Rivushiye struny. Read more about them on our website: http://www.nbresearchdigest.com.
With best seasonal wishes, hyvää joulua & с наступающими праздниками!
A treat for electronic ambient fans is provided by a long-awaited CD re-release of Esa Kotilainen's Tangerine Dream/Klaus Schulze-style solo album Ajatuslapsi ("A Thought Child") from 1977, which is now out on Love/Siboney, a company specializing in CD re-releases of the legendary Finnish label Love Records, which went bankrupt in 1979, leaving behind a large legacy in Finnnish rock, jazz, folk and also political music.
The album was originally released as an edition of 500 copies, Kotilainen playing all instruments there. Alongside Tangerine Dream, Lobsang Rampa's controversial book The Third Eye is mentioned as its inspiration, Kotilainen visualising such tracks as 'Avartuva näkemys' as a journey of Tibetan monks in a cave of stalactites.
Esa Kotilainen (b. 1946) is known as a keyboard wizard and synth veteran, who provided his contributions to Wigwam's most popular album Nuclear Nightclub (1975), also as a member of the band's latest incarnation, which is still in business. Furthermore, Kotilainen has provided his services as a session musician for such as Tasavallan Presidentti, Jukka Tolonen, Hector, J. Karjalainen, Nils-Aslak Valkeapää and many more. He has also been a member of Neum.
Esa Kotilainen's career in electronic music started in 1974 when he expensively imported from Germany a MiniMoog, an instrument rarely seen in Finland those days. During this era Kotilainen was playing gigs on a ferry called Finnhansa, which sailed between Helsinki and Travemünde, and paid for the instrument 6.100 Finnish marks: the price of a small car those days. The first gig with Kotilainen's Minimoog was creating sound effects for the soundtrack of Spede Pasanen's film comedy Viu-hah-hah-taja (1974), and the first music recording was obviously for the solo album Robson of Frank Robson.
Kotilainen's new career as a synth wiz got him loads of offers for background music in commercials after which his career was guaranteed in progressive bands like Wigwam, who were after electronic sounds generally favoured by the prog genre. Kotilainen is also said to have in his collection a Mellotron (an analogue predecessor of samplers, using pre-recorded tape loops played with a keyboard), perhaps the only one in this country.
Ajatuslapsi CD features as bonus tracks two versions of 'Matkaaja' ("The Traveller"), a 1978 commissioned work from Kotilainen for the Finnish National Ballet. The CD booklet also includes English liner notes by Pekka Laine, where Esa Kotilainen shares his insights on the album's origins.
1. Unisalissa ("In a dream room") 2. Avartuva näkemys ("The mind broadens") 3. Ilmassa ("In the air")
CD bonus tracks:
4. Matkaaja (1978) ("The traveller") 5. Matkaaja (1978) Kaiutettu versio (= A version with echo, 2008)
Album credits:
Esa Kotilainen plays on the album: Mini-Moog, ARP-2600, Vox StringThing, Fender Rhodes, Kouvola Casotto, kantele, Hammond B3, Leslie 251 & 145, Binson Echo, MXR 90 Phase, MXR 100 Phase, Maestro Phase Shifter, Foxx Wah Wah pedal, Indian bells, Farfisa organ, Polymoog.
Recorded by Jukka Teittinen at Alppi-studio, mixed at Finnlevy Studios, Helsinki, summer 1976. Cover by Kari Sipilä.
CD bonus tracks recorded at Esa Kotilainen home studio. CD remastering by Pauli Saastamoinen at Finnvox Studios, April 2008. CD layout by Japa Mattila. CD liner notes by Pekka Laine.
"Aikamme musiikkiin kuuluu atonaalisuus, se kumoaa käsitykset sävelten suhteista. Aton on uudistaja, aurinko, voima. Elämme atonaalista, uutta ja uudistuvaa aikaa."
This interesting curio just got into pHinnWeb's attention. A flexi disc perhaps from the late 70s or early 80s, advertising Nokia Cable Factory's Aton cables and featuring various appropriately electronic atonal sounds and some generic disco.
Finnish underground legend Veli-Matti "Läjä" Äijälä celebrates his fiftieth birthday on Monday 29 September 2008. Originally hailing from Tornio in Finnish Lapland, near Swedish border, Läjä Äijälä has during his career of 30 years worked on such diverse musical areas as punkrock, avantgarde electronic music, rockabilly and the roots blues. pHinnWeb congratulates. Known from the hardcore punk act Terveet Kädet (enjoying a vast cult reputation around the world), the minimal electronic act Aavikon Kone ja Moottori (playing a British Wasp synth and paving way in the late 1970s for such later artists as Pan sonic), bands such as The Billy Boys, Leo Bugariloves and The Sultans, the prolific multitalent Läjä Äijälä is also a comic book artist, citing as his influences Elvis Presley, Suicide, Albrecht Dürer, S/M imagery, Urho Kekkonen and Egyptology. In 2004 Bad Vugum Records released a compilation album The Passions of Läjä Äijälä, getting together tracks from Äijälä's different musical projects throughout his whole career.
A Billy Boys 7" single released in Poland, with Läjä Äijälä's characteristic sleeve art
Best soundtracks are always inseparable from the films they are created for; as some prime examples Ennio Morricone's music for Sergio Leone, Bernard Herrmann's works for Alfred Hitchcock and Martin Scorsese, or to pick up one personal favourite, Lalo Schifrin's sounds for Don Siegel's 1971 Dirty Harry. This is also the case with Eduard Artemyev (transcribed also as "Artemiev" or "Artemjev", b. 1937), a Russian composer best known for his electronic ambient soundtracks for Andrei Tarkovsky's films such as Solaris (1972), Zerkalo ("The Mirror", 1975) and Stalker (1979). Fitting to Tarkovsky's dream-like metaphysical films, to create his eerie transcendental sounds, citing both Johann Sebastian Bach and Indian music, Artemyev worked with the rare Russian synthesizer ANS, a photoelectronic instrument using glass discs to generate the sinewaves.
Karenlee Grant's collage art for the alternative version of A Clockwork Orange soundtrack (1972)
A Clockwork Orange -- a 1962 novel by Anthony Burgess and its 1971 film adaptation by Stanley Kubrick -- has stirred controversy and both positively and negatively influenced people in ensuing decades since the original conception. The movie was released in 1971, the same year as two other notoriety-gaining film studies on violence, Don Siegel's Dirty Harry and Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs, indicating that something had perhaps gone sore in the aftermath of the 60s liberal revolution.
Probably Burgess and Kubrick's intentions were not exactly ACO becoming such a pop phenomenon and starting a life of its own, inspiring countless artists in music (from David Bowie to Sigue Sigue Sputnik; punk movement being in general another reflection of the ACO ethos), fashion, and naturally other films (Oliver Stone's sensationalist Natural Born Killers lacked the philosophical depths and ironic nuances of Kubrick). My own take on ACO is as a sister work to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), perhaps depicting the sinister, seedy and violent circumstances of those unfortunate left on Earth while Dave Bowman and Discovery crew were on their more spiritually heightened, universe-embracing cosmic pursuits.
Here are some new-found interesting alternative takes on the phenomenon.
Feuilleton, the blog by British visual artist John Coulthart always worth checking, recently featured an entry on A Clockwork Orange and sounds & images connected to it.
Switched-On Bach was a 1968 album of Johann Sebastian Bach adaptations for the Moog synthesizer, painstakingly created by the electronic composer W. Carlos together with Rachel Elkind as a sort of sonic animation movie with multiple tape splices, when with early Moogs one could only generate one monophonic sound at a time. The album was a huge success in the days synthesizer was still mostly considered an expensive gimmick only good for creating spooky or funny sound effects for sci-fi movies and radio jingles, as is chronicled in Analog Days (2002) by Trevor Pinch and Frank Trocco. Or to be used in avantgarde music, allegedly with not too much commercial potential there.
Rock bands such as The Doors also had experimented with a Moog synth but the instrument was considered only good for creating weird psychedelic sounds, to spice up a bit the usual rock instrumentation, and not something one could create whole albums with. Switched-On Bach changed all that, and tons of more-or-less cheesy copycat Moog albums followed in its wake: there were some exceptions such as the works by Dick Hyman, but at this moment Moog felt like another passing craze.
Nevertheless, thanks to the album's success, Wendy Carlos was subsequently commissioned by Stanley Kubrick, planning his film version, to basically do the same thing for Ludwig van Beethoven, the favourite composer of Alex, in the book the devilish leader of his gang of "droogs".
Alongside the official film soundtrack, Wendy Carlos published in 1972 another album featuring also Carlos's compositions for the film that remained unused. On her page Carlos shares more information on her film music.
Allen Jones (b. 1937) is a British sculptor who came into prominence with his notorious "Chair, Table and Hat Stand" -- the jury is still out whether this is a misogynist work of glaring pop art verging on pornography or an ironic, even feministic comment on sexism. In a Guardian story Allen Jones tells Kubrick wanted to use his designs as props for the film but Jones refused, instead offering to design BSDM-type rubber costumes for the Korova Milk Bar waitresses (it's interesting Jones calls himself a feminist in the Guardian story). Kubrick didn't use the outfits by Jones but still emulated the artist's style for the bar's now-infamous forniphiliac furniture.
Some unused Clockwork Orange designs by Allen Jones
Well, I have no answers or solutions. Personally, at the moment the past and origins seem to be more inspiring than the current state of club culture, as just finishing Analog Days (2002) on the early days of analogue synths (Moog, Buchla, ARP, EMS) proved.
Helsinki's Sähkö Recordings announces a new Ø (pronounced "Ohm") album, called Oleva ("The Existing"), from Mika Vainio (Pan sonic); somewhat surprisingly including a cover version of 'Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun' (note: the track is credited on the sleeve as "Set the Controls to the Heart of the Sun"), a track from Pink Floyd's second album Saucerful of Secrets (1968)!
Cat.no.: SÄHKÖ-023 Artist: Ø Title: Oleva Format: 2x12"/CD Release date: July 2008 Produced by: Mika Vainio
Tracklist:
1. Unien holvit 2. S-bahn 3. Set the Controls to the Heart of the Sun 4. Frekvenssi 5. Loihdittu 6. Vastus 7. U-bahn 8. Koituva 9. Mojave 10. Tasanko 11. Kausaaliton 12. Muistetun palaava taajuus
Credits:
All tracks by Mika Vainio except 3 by Roger Waters Recorded in Berlin 2007-2008 Photographs by Mika Vainio Graphics by Tommi Grönlund Mastered by Denis Blackham at Skye Mastering Cut by Rashad Becker at D&M
Lest we forget... Another electronic music pioneer has passed away: Bebe Barron, who with his husband Louis Barron created the ground-breaking electronic score for the 50s sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet, died on 20 April.
(The original Star Trek took its cues from Forbidden Planet, which was ambitiously based on Shakespeare's The Tempest; the film also featuring Leslie Nielsen, later best known from The Naked Gun films.)
Pekka Airaksinen (b. 1945) is best known as the musical mastermind behind the Finnish ultra-radical and scandalous performance group/proto-noise band The Sperm of the late 1960’s. During the new millenium he has also acquired international recognition as an early pioneer of electronic experimental music. On his new album "Mahagood" Airaksinen turns to his first musical loves – electronic music of the 1950’s and jazz – as sources for sampling. The result is an improvisatory collage in which his synthetic sound of recent years combines organically with layers of history.
Simultaneously N&B Research Digest re-releases the 2003 double-CD compilation "Madam I'm Adam" produced for Love Records as a download-only album. The compilation has one CD’s worth of Airaksinen’s work from 1968–2003 plus the same compositions remixed by Nurse With Wound (his first champion outside of Finland), Mira Calix, Philipp Quehenberger, Curd Duca, Simon Wickham-Smith, Es, Notchnoi Prospekt, Anton Nikkilä, and others. ”Madam I’m Adam delivers on its stated goals: a reasonably priced introduction to the history and continued influence of one of the underground’s most unique bodies of work.” (Jonathan Dean, Brainwashed, USA)
Ponytail aka Samuli Tanner is one of the bright young talents of Helsinki’s musical underground and is internationally probably best known as one half of the dubstep production team Clouds. Ponytail’s music could be called experimental dubstep or hip hop, but one that’s infused with a refined anti-musicianship and roughness that has similarities with Pekka Airaksinen's approach. In Ponytail’s case the resistance to commercial slickness originates in punk rock and Finnish agrarian folk music. Samuli spent most of his teens in punk groups, and he says that his music’s out-of-tuneness and wayward rhythms have first of all to do with punk spirit, but also the traditional ”pelimanni spirit” of Finnish folk music – Tanner’s family has spawned folk musicians for several generations. Charles Mingus and other jazz innovators of the past are sources of inspiration as well, and another trait shared with Pekka Airaksinen is the way both musicians borrow elements and sample liberally from an eclectic variety of electronic genres, but without paying dues to the conventions and meanings of the originals, which results in shockingly new and personal music.
Listen to previews of Ponytail's "Themes For Cops":
"Themes For Cops" and Pekka Airaksinen’s "Mahagood" are released as download-only albums by N&B Research Digest, but small CD-R print runs will be produced for the album launch concert held in Helsinki’s Lepakkomies club on June 10th. Other acts of the evening are Pasilian savut, whose live album will be released by NBRD in August, and DJ Anton Nikkilä.
N&B Research Digest järjestää Pekka Airaksisen ja Ponytailin uusien albumien julkaisukonsertin: Release party for the new albums of Pekka Airaksinen and Ponytail:
Esiintyjät / Performers: Pekka Airaksinen Ponytail Pasilian savut DJ Anton Nikkilä
Liput 5 euroa / Tickets 5 euros
Tiistaina 10.6. klo 21 alkaen, ravintola Lepakkomies, Helsinginkatu 1 (”Piritorina” tunnetun Vaasanaukion laidalla, Sörnäisten metroaseman vieressä) Tuesday 10 June, doors 9 pm, at Lepakkomies, Helsinginkatu 1, Helsinki (by Vaasanaukio, next to Sörnäinen tube station)
Pekka Airaksinen (s. 1945) tunnetaan suomalaisen 60-luvun undergroundin radikaaleimpiin ilmentymiin kuuluneen The Sperm -yhtyeen musiikillisena johtajana ja viime vuosina myös kansainvälistä tunnustusta saaneena kokeellisen musiikin pioneerina. Nyt julkaistava "Mahagood"-albumi aloittaa uuden vaiheen hänen urallaan. Airaksinen palaa ensimmäisten musiikillisten rakkauksiensa, jazzin ja 50-luvun elektronimusiikin pariin ja improvisoi niiden pohjalta kiihkeän sample-kollaasin, jossa hänen hänen 2000-luvun synteettinen saundinsa yhdistyy orgaanisesti historian kerroksiin. Airaksinen on viimeksi esiintynyt Helsingissä soolona vuoden 2003 Avanto-festivaalilla.
Näytteitä "Mahagoodilta" voi kuunnella osoitteessa: http://www.nbresearchdigest.com/mahagood
N&B Research Digest julkaisee samalla mp3-muodossa Love Recordsin kanssa yhteistyössä tuotetun "Madam I'm Adam" -kokoelma-tupla-CD:n, joka esittelee Airaksisen musiikkia vuosilta 1968–2003. Oleellinen osa Airaksisen ainutlaatuisesta tuotannosta, jonka harvinaisuuksia myydään nettihuutokaupoissa sadoilla euroilla, tulee näin ensi kertaa maailmanlaajuisesti saataville iTunesiin, Amazoniin ja muihin nettikauppoihin englantilaisen jakelufirma Diogenes Musicin kautta.
Ponytail eli Samuli Tanner (s. 1982) on Helsingin ”bassomusiikki”-skenen lupaavimpia nimiä: Tannerin ja Tommi Liikan dubstep-projekti Clouds on levyttänyt Englannissa ja Yhdysvalloissa ja keikkailee maailmalla. Hänen soolotuotantonsa, esimerkiksi nyt julkaistava Ponytailin nettialbumi "Themes For Cops", on kuitenkin ilmeisessä hengenheimolaissuhteessa Pekka Airaksisen rinnakkaismaailman kanssa. Jazz-klassikko Charles Mingusin diggailun ohella yhteistä näille tekijöille on häikäilemätön tapa käyttää elementtejä monista eri musiikinlajeista, kuten kokeellisesta hip hopista tai electronicasta (Ponytailin tapauksessa esimerkiksi Spectreltä tai Autechreltä) välittämättä vähääkään niihin alunperin liittyneistä konventioista ja merkityksistä, mistä on tuloksena täysin persoonallista ja shokeeraavan uutta musiikkia. Jos Airaksisella sävellysten kulmikkuus ja soiton hienostunut epämuusikkous ilmaisee 60-luvun undergroundin ylenkatsetta kaupallisesti sliipattua ilmaisua kohtaan, niin Ponytaililla ne ovat peräisin punkista ja suomalaisesta kansanmusiikista. Samuli on soittanut eniten juuri punkkia, ja hän sanoo, että Ponytailin epävireisyys ja rytminen holtittomuus on ennen kaikkea punk-henkeä. Toisaalta hän kutsuu sitä myös pelimannimeiningiksi, joka kulkee suvussa: Tannerit ovat useamman sukupolven ajan olleet kansanmuusikoita.
Näytteitä "Themes For Copsilta" voi kuunnella osoitteessa: http://www.nbresearchdigest.com/themes
"Themes For Cops" on Tannerin ensimmäinen laajempaan kansainväliseen levitykseen tarkoitettu soolotuotos. Sekä Pekka Airaksisen "Mahagood"-nettialbumista että "Themes for Copsista" teetetään julkaisukonserttia varten pieni CD-R-painos.
Tapahtuman kolmas esiintyjä, sykähdyttävänä livebändinä tunnettu Pasilian savut tuo ”grungejazzillaan” oman rock-näkökulmansa illan löyhästi muodostuneeseen teemaan. Yhteistä Airaksisen ja Ponytailin kanssa on paljonkin – omalakisuudesta, antimuusikko-asenteesta ja alleviivaamattomasta huumorista alkaen – mutta erojen löytäminen ja niistä riemuitseminen jääköön yleisön tehtäväksi. N&B Research Digest julkaisee elokuussa Pasilian savujen livealbumin.
Juhlakansaa viihdyttää lisäksi DJ Anton Nikkilä, joka pyörittää N&B Research Digestia yhdessä moskovalaisen Alexei Borisovin kanssa.
Roope Seppälä, Ville Pitkänen and Reima Tuovinen from Helsinki are the experimental/electronic/ambient act Musti Laiton (translates as "Blackie Lawless", as with the vocalist of the 1980s notorious glam-metal act W.A.S.P.), who have released a new album, Megacity Chillout. Responsible for the album's cover art is the legendary Läjä Äijälä (of Terveet Kädet/Billy Boys/Leo Bugariloves/Sultans fame). The album is released under Creative Commons licence 2.5. and is available as a free of charge Web release and CD release (TEMMI-0005).
Tracklist:
01 Expanding fintelligent design 02 Crazy snake 03 In this cave we have lived 04 Megacity nights 05 Now gimme vocals 06 Megacity chillout 07 Tunnelma pilalla
YLE Elävä Arkisto features some videoclips of DIMI, perhaps one of the first digital synthesizers in the world, which was designed in 1970 by Finnish electronic music pioneer Erkki Kurenniemi. Also part of the DIMI series was the "video organ" DIMI-O, guided with a video camera, which converted the real-time movements of performers into sounds and music. In an English-language demonstration film dancer Riitta Vainio shows off the possibilities of DIMI-O in 1971. DIMI-S (a.k.a. The Sexophone) registered through electrodes attached to performer's skin any emotional changes in him or her.
Here you can find video clips on the 1960s Finnish computer music, as presented by YLE Elävä Arkisto from the archives of Finnish Broadcasting Company.
Featuring a computer-written tango which even took the tangomeister Toivo Kärki by surprise and computer music from the universities of Turku and Tampere. Also such experts as Erkki Kurenniemi and Pertti Jotuni sharing their views on computer music.
V/Vm Test Records, those crazy pig mask-wearing culture jammers of Blighty, can now be found also from YouTube! The label was started in 1996 by V/Vm a.k.a. Jim Kirby and Jansky Noise a.k.a. Andy "Animal" McGregor, a jovial nutter whom I met here in Tampere some years ago, by the way (last I've heard from Andy was when he was working on Homenaje, a compilation record dedicated to the victims of Madrid's 2004 Atocha terrorist strike). V/Vm has specialised among all in electronic (and totally illicit) noise rape versions of your favourite MOR hits, such as Chris de Burgh's 'Lady In Red'. V/Vm versions of Frankie Goes To Hollywood's 'Relax' got the label angry calls from Frankie's lawyers. Nowadays Kirby is alone responsible for the operations of V/Vm.
Karlheinz Stockhausen (22 August 1928 - 5 December 2007), one of the pioneers of electronic music with such works as Gesang der Jünglinge (1955–56), has passed away.
Artist: NSI (Non Standard Institute) Title: Plays Non Standards Format: CD Cat.no: SÄHKÖ-022 Date: October 2007
Tracklist: (23 untitled piano pieces)
Press release info:
Non Standard Institute Plays Non Standards
Non Standard Institute is a piano drone project by sound engineers Max Loderbauer (Sun Electric) and Tobias Freund (Pink Elln, Sieg Üeber Die Sonne), both prominent techno producers whose careers date back the mid-1980s.
Compared to their earlier work in, Plays Non Standards is an exploration into a completely different direction. The music is based on the sounds of the grand piano played by Loderbauer and the subtle electronic "treatments" by Freund, with the help of vintage Roland DEP-5 and Roland TR-808 machines.
Very minimalistic and Spartan, yet rich in its attention to detail and sound, Plays Non Standards is a soundwork in the tradition of Brian Eno's Music For Airports. Yet, the music produced by Non Standard Institute is fully improvised, with "mistakes" being a vital part of their ambient experience.
Recorded over a two-year period in Berlin, Plays Non Standards does an outstanding job in blurring the line between modern acoustic piano music and the more philosophical end of electronic music.