Méryll Ampe "W7E" CD
MAR060
Release Date: November 4th, 2022

A multitude of processes, techniques, and forms unfold and unfurl within the work of Méryll Ampe,
an intermedia artist from Paris working through sound, sculpture, and installation using a wide assortment
of materials. What is immediately striking about Ampe’s work is the vibrant, non-linear approach to
electro-acoustic composition.
Here on the debut for Misanthropic Agenda, Ampe liberally reconfigures / deconstructs / genetically mutates
all sources: hydrophone recordings of vibrations through skin, analog synths, tape machinations,
sequencing programmed through algorithmic variability, and plenty of digital processing.
As Ampe describes it, the music on W7E is "a research with an experimental dimension, guided by notions that
systematically translate a form of ambivalence, between inside/outside, micro/macro. These intentions are
vectors of the dynamics, reliefs, depths and rhythm. My training as a visual artist also leads me to go through
mental images (such as a steep landscape, a boiling organism, an organic matter) which will then find a
sound form, states that I would describe as syncope, sound effluvia, abrasive arrhythmias. I look for a form of
plasticity in the sound medium, and that this energy become a living matter."
This multi-dimensional overlay through composition telescopes in and out of the body (not necessarily always
a human body, it should be noted), through a connectivity with technology that can influence psychological states
of being. The work addresses liminality, transitory slippages, and quantum theories of a particle being the two
separate places at the same time. If that can occur at the atomic level, why not through sound?
W7E stands as a dynamic, polydactyl album reflective of the aesthetics (if not concepts) of Keith Fullerton Whitman,
Francisco Meirino, and Bernard Parmegiani.
- Jim Haynes

links:
https://misanthropicagenda.bigcartel.com
https://misanthropicagenda.bandcamp.com
https://meryllampe.com/

Méryll Ampe "Close To"

Excerpt from Rebecca Lane & Clara de Asís "Distances Bending", live at Oscillation festival, Brussels (BE), 29 April 2023.

A collaborative composition by Clara de Asís and Rebecca Lane deriving from a series of encounters and explorations throughout different times, spaces and forms.

Distances Bending is an ever-expand­ing pro­cess — a build­ing up, dis­tilling, and mir­ror­ing of mater­i­als par­tic­u­lar to each artist, respond­ing to and inhab­it­ing a space over mul­tiple hours or days. A repeated time struc­ture, a tem­por­al loop that is altered through upwardly evolving ration­ally-tuned fre­quen­cies, vari­ous flutes (whose size, timbre and shape cor­res­pond to these fre­quen­cies), elec­tron­ics, and chan­ging light, the piece cre­ates a subtle space where per­cep­tion is transformed.

Rebecca Lane: flutes, organ pipes, whistles
Clara de Asís: synthesizer

Rebecca Lane & Clara de Asís / Distances Bending (Excerpt) – Live at Oscillation 2023

from forthcoming: Francisco Meirino "A Perpetual Host" CD

A Perpetual Host is Francisco Meirino’s fourth full-length, solo studio album on Misanthropic Agenda.
A deep dive into personal loss and the banalities of life and art, A Perpetual Host captures the raw, solitary, and often acerbic extremes that drive creation. Across four pieces, Meirino explores sonic tension and boredom, questioning the simplicity and complexity of the mundane with bursts of clarity that redefine existence itself.

Francisco Meirino is a Spanish sound artist based in Switzerland.

His music explores the tension between programmable material and the potential for its failure. His interest lies primarily in what is not supposed to be recorded : the end of life of electronic devices, electrostatic noise, magnetic fields and the unconventional use of music hardware and sound systems and how to exploit these sonic failures in radically different ways in his sound pieces.

His music combines intricate textures, sonic precision, wide spatial panning and is fascinating by its physical intensity and detail precision.

He mostly uses the modular synthesizer (Eurorack-Serge), various microphones, the computer, the field recorder, tape recorders and tape echoes, EMF detectors and various home-made electro-acoustic devices.

https://misanthropicagenda.bandcamp.com/album/francisco-meirino-a-perpetual-host

misanthropicagenda.bigcartel.com/product/francisco-meirino-a-perpetual-host

A Perpetual Host

Francisco Meirino "Something Always Remains"

Composed exclusively with feedback using hydrophones, water and porcelain bowls.Feedback occurs with each bowl tuned on certain frequencies depending on the quantity of water. I manipulate with hands the balance between calm water stabilizing and accelerating feedback and waves moving and interrupting feedback tones. Feeling like I become wind…! Multi-tracked and half speeded in part.

Nagi (calm) - rough mix

Recording a large flock of fieldfares and redwings in an orchard, listening to them spread apart and bunch together in tight groups that cling to the tops of the apple trees.
Recorded on the 30th of January 2024, in East Devon UK.

in a lane between two apple orchards listening to fieldfares and redwings

Rain gently pitter-patters on a coastal saltmarsh pool after dark. Surf roars behind the protection of a sand dune, which in turn provides shelter for wintering waterfowl. Mute and Whooper Swans call to one another as they browse on aquatic vegetation. Wigeon whistles cut through the cold air as they paddle and nibble at peace in the wild blackness.

Gentle Rain, Soothing Surf, Whispering Wildfowl

Au fond mon ptit loup il y a quelque chose d'insaisissable, de sauvage et d'étrangement gênant. 
A chaque fois que tu t'approches ça file entre tes doigts, et parfois sans le vouloir des choses connues et en même temps oubliées remontent à la surface. Pourtant quelque part dans les profondeurs de tout ça, Elle est là.

L'âme de fond

for halloween.

recorded halloween 2008.
from ihm comp 3 http://www.noquam.com/ihatemusic/ihm_comp3/ihm_comp3/ihm_comp_second.html

they're not there

Excerpt from track 2 of 'Knot Invariants', released by Entr'acte April 2012.

Klemheist excerpt

Vegetal Negatives is a game of sonic mutations, mimicry, inversions, and association inspired by a text called "On pataphotograms", by the French writer René Daumal – a quasi-metaphysical essay that toys with breaking the conceived separateness of natural forms through poetic imagination. 

The four electroacoustic compositions on the album combine and arrange field recordings, electronic feedback, Buchla and ARP synthesizers, bowl gong and harmonium, textures of detailed acoustic sound, and sustained tones with gentle microtonal beating into a precise musical narrative. She juxtaposes recordings of rooms and empty vessels, natural and artificial climates, spontaneous and staged events. Ahti draws upon Annea Lockwood's ideas about associative movements between sounds based on shared characteristics and sonic energy. Her approach to field recordings is neither diaristic, documentaristic, nor purely acousmatic, but rather it starts out from somewhere in between these notions: the sounds hover between abstraction and the deeply familiar, moving into a realm of poetic metaphor where they are set in relation to each other, fleetingly mirroring or shadow-dancing. Acoustic environments mutate into synthetically derived shadow forms. 

The opening track, "Coastal Inversion”, moves from a seemingly familiar seascape into an ocean of wavelike synthetic staccato patterns, turning itself inside-out on the shore, before diving back into a sea of resonance. ”Rooftop gardens” arranges a series of largely unprocessed field recordings into a dream-logic sequence of upward movement towards the clouds. On the other side, ”Symbiogenesis” brews a slow evolution of wet, airy and earthy sounds and resonant friction. The closing track, ”Chora”, imagines a meditative space of breath: filter resonance posing as organ pipes against a backdrop of breezy industrial hoovers merges halfway with a harmonium improvisation that foregrounds the frictions of the wooden instrument itself, just before filtering out into resonant harmony. 

Releases March 29, 2019 via Hallow Ground 

Marja Ahti: composition, production, field recording, Buchla 200 and ARP 2600 
Recorded at EMS, Stockholm, WORM, Rotterdam, and on locations in Greece, Alaska, Finland and Sweden. 
Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi 
Designed by Ruth Stofer

Vegetal Negatives

Coastal Inversion

FUJI||||||||||TA, iki, LP

Release date - April 3th 2020
Catalogue nr. - HG2003
Format - Ltd. Vinyl/digital

https://hallowground.bandcamp.com

Credits:
All music composed, played and Recorded by FUJI|||||||||||TA
Mixed by Makoto Oshiro
Mastering by Lawrence English at Negative Space

Tracklist:
1) keshiki (09:42)
2) nNami (09:20)
3) osoi (10:12)
4) sukima (07:03)

///
"FUJI|||||||||||TA has created a work that operates as a beautiful nexus between the material and immaterial qualities of music. 
It is a lived-in dreamscape of deep, rich tonality. A remarkable debut."
(Lawrence English)

///
FUJI||||||||||TA, real name FUJITA Yosuke, is a Japanese sound artist. After countless performances in different contexts either solo or along artists such as Yamantaka Eye of Boredoms and the legendary avant-gardist SUZUKI Akio as well as a slew of solo releases, his LP »iki« (»breath«) for the Swiss-based Hallow Ground label is his first in nine years. On these four pieces, Fujita explores the idiosyncratic sound qualities of the pipe organ he has built all by himself in 2009. This - quite literally unique - instrument features only eleven pipes, an air pump called »fuigo« which was modelled after a traditional blacksmith’s one and has no keyboard. Inspired by traditional gagaku, it was designed to evoke rich landscapes rather function as just another musical instrument. While his previous records saw FUJI||||||||||TA explore various modes of abstraction, »iki« is a highly emotive yet meditative album, musically restrained but full of imagination.

»keshiki« immediately sets the mood for this record with a long sustained note that is punctuated by the soft clicking of Fujita’s air pump. Once Fujita carefully starts bringing melodies into play, the interplay of the drone and the discrete rhythmic element gives way to a fuller harmonic whole. »keshiki« is an intimate piece that perfectly displays the artist’s knack for painting a rich sonic picture with only a reduced palette. »nNami« juxtaposes the sounds of two pipes that are out of tune with each other, creating a hypnotic sensation of ebb and flow (»nami« translates to »wave«) that is full of subtle friction. It’s a staggering artistic interpretation of the instrument’s material characteristics. Clocking in at ten minutes, »osoi« (»slow«) is an overall melancholic piece that explores the relationship between different tone colours through minute changes in pace. Finally, »sukima« (»blank space«) is the shortest and the most rhythmic piece of the four. Composed of only staccati, it is a masterful exploration of the harmonic qualities Fujita’s stunning pipe organ has to offer.

Recorded between September and December of 2019, »iki« marks the culmination of FUJI||||||||||TA’s ten-year-long work with the instrument that he had built without any prior knowledge and started to teach himself to play without a manual in sight. It is, in other words, the unique result of a unique musical mind paying his dues to the uniqueness of his own creation; introspective and welcoming at once.

in a lane between two apple orchards listening to fieldfares and redwings

Auguste

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