we mourn. then rise.

to the dark, with love.

OLIGARCHY - dwella series

OSUTAKA

Degradation Loops was a 16 day composition that gradually and completely 'bit crushes' my 2015 album Yellow Bell. Produced for a group show at the 55 Sydenham Rd, Marrickville gallery in Sydney, a process of sonic destruction unfolds in response to visual artists destroying and reassembling their work, to create new work, and to question the dominance of commercial imperatives within art. Here is a 14'48" time lapse edit of the 16 day composition, 2016.

Degradation Loops_55 Sydenham Rd Marrickville

This piece was made for the opening of the Radio Belgrade Electronic Studio on March 2 2018. 

This is my 1st recording of the real-time improvisation with EMS Synthi 100 + my computer setup.

Computer setup was based on the TouchOSC interface, Pure data patch and Ableton live. Improvisational dialogues between Synthi and computer were done through a dynamic interactive interface on my tablet and tweaking of the Synthi sounds live and playing with their parameters. I haven't used Synthi's sequencer (or a computer sequencer), but rather variety of key triggers, joysticks and envelope shaper trapezoids.

Due to a wide frequency range, it's not advisable to listen to this recording through a laptop speaker or similar.

This is my first use of the modular synthesizer in live performance and/or composition.

TV recording of the whole event: https://youtu.be/9tUwHGweUxY
(simultaneous performance in 2 studios of the Radio Belgrade with audience, live TV and radio broadcast)

Radio Concert No.1

INFO => self-titledmag.com/2018/05/11/ne247-meyers-negative-artist-mix/

NE247: Meyers - 'Negative Artist' Mix

Face [Glimpse] (with Oren Ambarchi & James Rushford)

Ecker & Meulyzer “Carbon” (SUB033)

Digital & CD: https://eckermeulyzer.bandcamp.com/album/carbon

Koenraad Ecker and Frederik Meulyzer make their Subtext debut with Carbon. 

Based on field recordings made at Norway’s Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a secure seed bank located on the island of Spitsbergen, Carbon grapples with the many contradictions that lie at the heart of our shift into the capitalocene. The project began in 2017, when Ecker and Meulyzer scored the performance “Frozen Songs,” a commission by Zero Visibility Dance Company led by Ina Christel Johannesen.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault was conceived of as an effort to preserve copies of seeds from key crop varieties, ensuring their persistence in the event of large-scale crises. Yet the area is warming faster than anywhere else on earth, causing the permafrost to melt and putting the seed vault at risk. 

Across from the Seed Vault lie the decrepit remnants of Svalbard’s mining activities of the early 20th century; Carbon wrestles with the incongruities nestled in the town’s landscape. Reflecting on dissonances of stasis and change, closeness and distance, enclosure and expanse, as well as cynicism and hope, Ecker and Meulyzer consider the urgency of our situation while trying to sidestep all-too popular depictions of dystopia. In Ecker’s own words, “we don’t have the luxury to afford that kind of pessimism.” 

From close, supple sounds to cold, brutal sonics, Carbon meditates on the many challenging questions and contradictions raised by the Seed Vault and its surroundings—a landscape that embodies and makes visible the many intertwined phenomena that shape our current predicament.

Ecker and Meulyzer, formerly known as Stray Dogs, have released works such as Wasteland, recorded in deconsecrated church in Antwerp, and Kalkar, recorded in the cooling tower of a former power station in Germany. 

Koenraad Ecker works in the fields of electro-acoustic music, field recording, radio plays, stage performance and text. Together with Andrea Taeggi, he is part of the Opal Tapes-affiliated duo Lumisokea. His output encompasses studio albums, audiovisual installations, texts, performances, and sound design for film. 

Frederik Meulyzer is a percussionist active in projects including Belgian jazz band Hamster Axis of the One-Click Panther, contemporary music and theatre company Post uit Hessdalen, and experimental psych-krautrock band Slumberland.

The ecological impact of the production of this record will be compensated through a carbon offsetting program .

Bandcamp

Ecker & Meulyzer - Growth

TR095 - Nemeton / Rafael Anton Irisarri - '...spin into nothingness'

Raft of Trash is a generative music project exploring the sounds of systems using the natural rhythms of environmental dialogue in the world-building game SimCity 3000. It is a collaboration between sound artists/musicians Andrew PM Hunt (aka Dialect) and JC Leisure, and designer Thom Isom.  

Like the group’s early EPs, their debut album Likeness on the Edge of Town showcases the breadth of possibilities emerging from their unique process. Whilst playing SimCity 3000, the in-built sound effects of the game are converted and repurposed into MIDI data which is then fed to Hunt and Leisure's synths and samplers in real time. The resulting soundscape, imprinted with the dynamics of a simulated environment, is then augmented with live guitar, spoken word and field recordings to create an uncanny collage of wild synthesis, experimental narrative and bending, viscous guitar.  

Inspired by Fluxus artist Alison Knowles, the spoken word passages sprinkled across the record act as part travel journal, part system theory field guide as “someone guiding you through the simulated desert landscape, and through some kind of inner journey”. Exploring for instance the connections between the irregularities we discover in our functioning bodies and the impact of environmental influences or describing the fullness of the reality of stopping at a truck stop, these passages are an illuminating exploration of the complexity of living systems and real-life situations. Subtle musical references to Americana and sounds sourced from the desert around Joshua Tree contribute to a journey-like mood throughout the record. 

Musically, the record remains in largely abstract territory. Synths sprawl, crawl and fly above a sonic bed of creaks, ripples and bleeps; nothing is at it seems. This ambiguous relationship between the organic and the synthetic further highlights the themes explored by the group.  

Releasing in full on November 20 2020, as a limited edition poster and as digital files. 

Purchase on Bandcamp: https://raftoftrash.bandcamp.com/album/likeness-on-the-edge-of-town

Raft of Trash - Sans Sherif at the Painted Oasis

TR098 - JAMAICA!! - 'Leon'

TR115 - Maria Chavez & Jordi Wheeler - 'Five Thousand'

As you can imagine we are under huge pressure at the moment and are working flat out to ensure Cafe OTO survives this. The impact of this situation is extremely acute for small venues like ours and we need all the support we can get to pull through. Please donate what you can, if you can. Thank you. 

Cafe OTO opened in April 2008 with the aim of providing a home for creative new music that exists outside of the mainstream. It comprises one large cafe/performance space open during the day serving food and drink with an evening programme of live music almost seven nights a week. 

OTOROKU is part of OTOProjects - a not-for-profit Community Interest Company (CIC) that has been set up to manage the programme at Café Oto. Any profits from OTOROKU are put back into supporting what we do and will help us to continue programming the best musicians and performers from all over the world.

www.cafeoto.co.uk

TR098 - JAMAICA!! - 'Leon'

cafeOTO

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