During my days as a youngster I did quite a lot of travelling around Mexico by asking for rides at motorway entrances. On a certain occasion, I was given a ride on a large timber-carring truck across the mountain ridge which lies between Puebla and Veracruz. After settling down on my seat and a little later having exhausted the expected small talk, the truck driver immersed in great detail into his lifelong predilection for Mambo music ( which of course, we heard incessantly on the radio). It was very late at night and I was very tired, so I spent a strange night trying not to fall asleep, yet waking up between wild dreams invaded by the sounds of engine acceleration and the air brakes of the enormous machine, the blaring radio and the over enthusiastic conversation of the driver...

It is on the basis of that trip that I drew the psychological frame for Mambo Vinko. The piece is a sort of construction, or rather a deconstruction of this experience, organised as personal "road movie", complete with quotes from the different sonic characters who inhabited my dreams, including the unmistakable grunts of the 50's great king of mambo music, Dámaso Perez Prado. 

The work was composed for Vinko Globokar on a commission from the Groupe de Récherches Musicales in Paris in 1993. Vinko gave the première in Radio France on May 1993 to a fully awake audience.

Mambo Vinko

The Illusionist's Magic Box - for piano, toy piano and electronics (2024)

(its alright) beatrix

Endless Run

Written / Produced by Magnavolt
Mixed / Mastered by Magnavolt and Thomas
Artwork by: leaking_colour
https://www.instagram.com/leaking_colour/

Artwork edited by Magnavolt


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Released by Kenta Records.
©2025 Kenta Records· All Rights Reserved.

REDD

Songs on upcoming album - find us here: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/ballad-by-magnet

Flower Face*

Sophie Emilie Beha im Gespräch mit Samuel Favre über „Sur incises“

Neun Solist:innen – ein Klang

I’ve been mesmerised with the sound of Deaf Center since the very beginning. I think it’s been more than 20 years now since their Neon City EP was released on Type. This is way before I even knew that behind the project was a Norwegian duo who started making music together as friends. This is before I knew their names to be Erik K Skodvin and Otto A. Totland. Before I listened to, admired, and celebrated their solo works on here. And, before I met each one in person, and of course, before we naturally became friends. This is precisely why, when it came to launching Headphone Community and deciding on who I should profile there from the start, I reached out to Erik and his partner Monique Recknagel (who runs Sonic Pieces imprint) to pitch them this idea (it was actually when I visited their mi-so shop in Berlin). This is why Erik is the currently featured artist for the month of May on Headphone Community (join for just $1 for an intimate journey!), and this is why I am premiering this track for you today. It’s been another long period of silence for Deaf Center, but the two long-form pieces on Reverie clearly show that they have not put their collaboration on hold. If anything, it has only evolved into a hypnotic meditation on Otto’s keys and Erik’s strings, guitar, effects, and atmospherics, designed for a very deep listening session. The recordings actually come from a live performance in October 2024 in Rabih Beaini’s studio, Morphine Raum in Berlin, during the 15th anniversary celebration of Sonic Pieces. This is less of an improvisation and more of a dialogue between the two friends who haven’t spoken in a while. It is truly magical, and I only wish I could be there to experience it live.

In “Rev”, deeply effected piano motifs reverberate and echo in the depths of the room, evolving through looping and electronics into a blissful, mesmerising cloud of (dis)harmony. The sound is reminiscent of the 7inch “Vintage Well” mixed with the basic elements of 2011’s “Owl Splinters”. […] The immediate duality of the two performers has rarely been so strongly felt, Totland’s deep melodic feeling is underscored by Skodvin’s abstract ambience and processing. Dark versus light, loud versus quiet – this has always been at the core of what makes Deaf Center a special project.

TRACK PREMIERE : Deaf Center - Rev (excerpt)

This live recording was performed by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Tianyi Lu. Recorded by the ABC on February 5, 2019 at the Iwaki Auditorium in Melbourne and is shared with all necessary permissions for online display only.

Pandaemonium for large chamber orchestra was commissioned by the MSO for the 2018–2019 Cybec 21st Century Composers' Program.

With exhilarating force and momentum this piece propels the orchestra through a journey of dramatic transformations in nature and character, constantly flitting between explosive personalities and more subtle, mysterious guises. With gleeful abandon the instruments let loose in an arena of warring musical characters; a mayhem of all the potential forms the orchestra could become. Some heroic and ecstatic, yet some also violent and sinister. The effect is utter Pandæmonium, an appellation that, in its original form, stems from the archaic Greco-Latin compound of “pan” meaning “many”, and “daemons” meaning “little spirits”, “personas” or “demons.” Amidst the chaos of characters a core, triumphant theme attempts to break free to the surface, subduing all the other voices of the orchestra into one simple, united musical entity.

Pandaemonium

East Side Militia

Exile On Mainline

In the words of musicologist, Yolanda Moreno Rivas, “ Javier Alvarez (Mexico City, 1956) is probably the most interesting Mexican musician born in the 1950’s. An alert musical intelligence, sustained by the command of a plurality of techniques and an eclectic perspective has yielded a vigorous and multifaceted oeuvre with a highly original evolution. “

Composer of a large body of work, which encompasses music for the concert hall, the cinema and electroacoustics, Javier Alvarez began composition studies with Mario Lavista at the National Conservatory of Music, obtaining a Masters Degree at the University of Wisconsin with John Downey. In 1980, he continued his studies at the Royal College of Music, obtaining a Doctorate at the City University in London, in England, where he lived until 2005. In addition to his prolific creative career, which has won him ample international recognition, Alvarez boasts a 25-year long academic calling, having taught composition at the Royal College of Music and at the University of Hertfordshire. During 1989 he headed Sonic Arts Network, the society for electroacoustic music in Britain and, in 1995, he held the Artistic Directorship of the Society for the Promotion of New Music (SPNM). In addition to a 3-year residency at the Music Academy in Malmö, in Sweden, Alvarez has been visiting professor at the Paris Conservatoire and at the City University in London, becoming involved in 2004, as a founding director of the Escuela Superior de Artes Musicales de Yucatán educational project. In 2000 he was awarded the Mozart Medal and subsequently distinguished by the Sistema Nacional de Creadores  (FONCA). Since 2005, Javier Alvarez is a Member of the Mexican Academy of Arts and, in 2007, he was appointed Dean of the Conservatorio de las Rosas, position held until 2011. He currently lives in Mérida, in the Yucatan peninsula, where he is active as an independent composer. 
