Altar of Flies "Bortom Reven". iDEAL191 LP. Transparent blue vinyl. Cover by Altar of Flies / Allon Kaye. Ltd to 300 copies. Released in late April/early May.

Altar of Flies - Under Vår Livstid (iDEAL191 LP)

This is Rogue Syntax - Contexts No. 2 with Felicity Mangan. Felicity is a sound artist and composer based in Berlin who works with the varying timbres of animal voices combining them into quasi bio-acoustic environments. 

She has recordings out on Longform Editions and Mappa Editions, and you can check her stuff out on felicitymangan.org

We’re hosting some of her field recordings here as context for the next episode in which we examine the complexities of animal communications and one of the things we’re trying to do is break down the hard border between animal communications and human language.

Alistair Pennycook has been a guiding light in this research and in his book Applied Post-Human Linguistics he states:

“we can start to think of language, cognition and agency not merely as distributed across different people but rather as distributed beyond human boundaries and as playing an active role in a world that is not limited to human activity alone.”

While eco-feminist scholar Val Plumwood says,
“Human/nature dualism is a double-sided affair, destroying the bridge between the human and the non-human from both ends, as it were, for just as the essentially human is disembodied, disembedded and discontinuous from the rest of nature, so nature and animals are seen as mindless bodies, excluded from the realms of ethics and culture.”

So if we’re going to look at animal communications we’re going to have to get embodied, embedded and continuous - and one of the ways we can do that is to listen to animal voices and bodies in their contexts, and of course field recordings are a great way to do that.

So here’s a selection of field recordings by Felicity with comments, we hope you enjoy them.

Contexts 2: Field Recordings with Felicity Mangan

release on 1 October 2021 : https://bit.ly/3mhi3lg
@nebulo

Since 2006, Nebulo has been shaping electronic structures with mobile geometries. In his latest releases for Le Cabanon Records and Conditional, the French composer deepened his work on dynamics by modelling abrupt trajectories where silence clashed with synthetic saturations. For Borders, Nebulo chose to exploit the static temporality of repeated confinements to approach an encompassing musical universe.

Nebulo - Border D

Apeiron Wav

Unus Mundus

Elec_3CT

Oren Ambarchi - crys cole - Leif Elggren 'Certainly' excerpt

Taken from the album 'Metabolist Meter (Foster, Cottin, Caetani and a Fly)' released as LP and Digital.

Max Eilbacher 'Metabolist Meter (Foster, Cottin, Caetani and a Fly)' (excerpt) (SPGRM 002)

Ned Lagin's Seastones is a pioneering electronic composition interweaving metaphors from nature, science, art and music and the origins of music. Reflecting the technology, science, modern art, new ecological awareness and optimism of the times and culture, Seastones embodies the history of electronic music by taking full advantage of tape music, analog synthesizers and computer technology to create pieces that are dynamic, rich and deep.

Originally released by the Grateful Dead's Round Records in 1975, Seastones' reputation as a gem of electronic music was further enhanced by the celebrity of the musicians who contributed to the source material. Seastones musicians include Ned Lagin (processed piano, clavichord, organ, prepared piano, electric piano, synthesizers), Jerry Garcia (processed electric guitar, pedal steel guitar, voice), Phil Lesh (processed electric bass), David Crosby processed electric guitar and vocals), Grace Slick and David Freiberg (processed vocals), and Mickey Hart and Spencer Dryden (percussion).

This new LP presents two crafted Seastones sets (Sets 4 and 5, 18 tracks) drawn from the entire Seastones composition and contains gorgeous extended processed vocals by Garcia, Crosby, Slick and Freiberg, and beautiful abstract instrumental passages by Lagin and all.

Ned Lagin - Seastones - Seastones 03 - LP available Nov. 3, 2020

From AEST-058: Verge “Vignettes” CS

Belfast-based composer André Gough debuts on Perfect Aesthetics with his third full-length album, Vignettes. This album was written without a central concept or narrative in mind. Each track serves the primary purpose of evoking imagery for the listener and/or conveying a certain mood/emotion. The intention is that these tracks hopefully hold some type of cinematic quality for the listener whilst also resonating on a deeper personal level. This body of work is a collection of “Vignettes” as the title states. Tracks which are able to stand alone but also form part of a cohesive whole

Composed, recorded & mixed by André Gough in Belfast, 2020
Mastered by Caerulea in December 2020

Vignettes

Verge - View From Above

Nature As Being The Form Of The Other As Body

Where does fantasy end and reality begin? The dichotomy of the Apollonian and Dionysian nature of man represents our greatest inner duel - the dance of chaos and order, the struggle of mind versus heart, the battle of immaculate harmony and intoxicated euphoria; a lifetime of chasing one's wildest dreams and divine muses, raised to the heavens by sheer imagination, only to be washed ashore by the unrelenting waters of Earth, crashing against the jagged rocks of existence, faced only by one's own truthful reflection staring back from the indifference of the sea. That is our ultimate, inevitable fate: the futility of our desires, the certain tragedy of living torn between two tides. 

The Birth of Tragedy is a compilation in two halves reflecting the mythological symbolism of Apollo and Dionysus, descendants of Zeus. The first half presents the Apollonian form - order, harmony, clarity. The second half is Dionysian - a state of chaotic liberation without boundaries, driven by instinct, blinded bliss and disarray. The collision between these worlds unveils the drama that we find ourselves in.

TEARS001 
Various Artists
The Birth of Tragedy
Limited edition vinyl/cassette 

https://amuletoftears.bandcamp.com/album/the-birth-of-tragedy

OUT NOW.

Appropriate Savagery - Her Feet Rose Like Candles, Sculpture of an Odalisque

Amulet of Tears