info + tracklist: https://radio.syg.ma/episodes/guests-131-antonino-modica
https://antoninomodica.bandcamp.com

Antonino Modica

GUESTS 131 – Antonino Modica

TR160 - Joachim Nordwall - 'FORMS OF ECSTASY'

Taken from the album 'Piano Muisc 1-7' released as LP, CD and digital.


Editions Mego is proud to welcome Powell to its roster with a bizarre and strangely emotive new LP of synthetic computer works entitled Piano Music 1-7.

Via his own Diagonal Records imprint, his work on XL Recordings and, most recently, the opening of audio/film platform A Folder [afolder.studio], Powell has firm footing in the contemporary electronic landscape. During a wry and obstinate musical life he has twisted myriad synthetic forms into shapes that explore and expand upon the districts of post-punk, techno, noise + computer music, and in the the last year alone he has released four albums of hi-def abstractions, each inspired by a formalisation of music proposed by Iannis Xenakis. 

As an extension of this intense period of work/research/play with stochastic functions [using probabilities to compose music], various processes emerged that Powell then began to apply to more traditional musical events. Where ordinarily in his work the probabilities and relationships are used to define parameters such as wave-shape, folding, FM, filter modes etc., he now began to use them to create musical formations and visual scores that could be played back using any software/MIDI instrument [one of these can be seen on the rear cover of the LP release]. While mapping out this cartography of relations, he used a basic Grand Steinway sampler as a placeholder instrument; the longer the process went on, though, the more he began to embrace the acoustic properties of the synthetic piano and make it the bedrock for this new constellation of work. 

Piano Music 1-7, subtitled ‘Music for Synthetic Piano and Assorted Electronics’, consists of seven different synthetic islands strung together into a single composition. All were composed using the aforementioned processes that allowed Powell to play a piano, even if he never learned to do so with his hands. After all, ’In writing electronic music,’ Robin Mackay once wrote, ‘you also have to direct the invention of new tools.’

At times the piano skips gleefully over shadowing synthesis, whilst at others the synthetic sheets swarm and envelope the keys. The interplay between the two create a fantastical alternate reality, a cosmic machine in which time is eroded, shrunk and expanded, like a wax upon which operations and relations are inscribed or engraved. Many of the pieces express a playfulness or optimism verging on vitalism, as bundles of piano notes dance and interpolate with a never-repeating range of electronic gestures. The feel is of a brightly coloured flower-bed in various stage of bloom. This interplay of the [artifical] acoustic and the electronic builds on the pioneering processes developed by David Behrman in works such as Leapday Night, and Piano Music 1-7 could also be posited as a modern take on Conlon Nancarrow’s investigations for player piano. Similarly, the razor-sharp sonic properties and unfolding of non-human events recall the computer works of Xenakis and the surgical precision of Mego mainstay Florian Hecker.

Recorded in late 2020, these new Powell works propose not just a bold and bright vision of electronic music but serve also as a map with which, for 35 minutes at least, we can navigate our way out of the current milieu. As the artist himself remarks in the sleeve-notes, ‘. . . What emerged from this fog or soup [for me] were ideas and processes that felt affirmative and life giving — sensations I had always hoped to convey in my music. Perhaps the optimism or positivity I felt at these musical events unfolding, these clusters and knots tumbling in different directions across time, can also be felt by you.’

Music for Synthetic Piano and Assorted Electronics

Composed and recorded by Powell, 2020
Mixed by Powell and Tobin Jones at The Park Studios, London
Mastered by Russell Haswell

Art direction by Guy Featherstone
Photography by John Cronin

Powell 'Piano Music #1' (EMEGO 301)

There’s a body of water in the woods near Carrboro. Dappled light on the trail leads you to it. Crunch of leaves underfoot. A river feeds the swimming hole where people plunge, naked and alive. On a chair you sit reminiscing about the future. After a dip, you lay on a big smooth rock - let the sun bake you dry. Then you walk further into the woods.

Like coming upon some keyboardists situated at the mouth of a cave, the entreaties on this record are calming but enigmatic, tinged with melancholy and reflection. Recurring motifs are given room to grow—there’s much space, and the progressions percolate, an auditory mapping of emotional crevices. Sentimentalism given a rougher edge. It lures you in; an orb appears, bright and buzzing. It motions for you to continue. As you do, a fragrance floats through the cave and fills your psyche, like a thousand roses hidden in the dark.

On "Keyboard Suite Vol. 1", MARV imbues analog subtractive and FM synthesis with a distinct physicality. Dub studio techniques and rigorously hand-played performances create an 'environmental' keyboard masterpiece strongly connected to the lineage of 1970s-80s private press ambient and electronic recordings-- but elegantly modern sound design and production methods center the album in the present day. A timeless quality pervades "Keyboard Suite Vol. 1", allowing for easy repeats, marinating the subconscious ache of loss with a dreamily resolute hope.

keyboards and effects ~ Geoff Schilling and Nathan Taylor
french horn (A2) ~ Aaron Smithers
mixdown assistance ~ Glyn Maier
audio finalization ~ Nathan Taylor
design and layout ~ Joe Bastardo (www.josephbastardo.com)

all proceeds to Carolina Abortion Fund (Durham, NC) ~ www.carolinaabortionfund.org

ALSO WILL BE STOCKED BY:

Tobira Records (JP)
All Day Records (US)
Commend (US)
Boomkat (UK)
Industrial Coast (UK)

LP details ~
black vinyl, printed center labels
lacquer cut ~ Amy Dragon
recycled black paper jackets ~ Middle Press
silkscreened with water/soy-based ink ~ Goatmother Industrial
recycled plantable seed paper insert ~ Greenfield Paper, debossed with Braille text* ~ Middle Press
custom scent ~ Meadow Maker Apothecary (www.instagram.com/_meadowmakers_/)

*may not be readable due to paper thickness and texture

*ALL LPS WILL BE SHIPPED OUTSIDE OF JACKET FOR SAFETY*

Keyboard Suite I

MARV - Stable Mate (ENM10)

A question echoing through space and time — “why does it hurt so bad?” by https://instagram.com/moonspire.music holds pain gently, wrapping sorrow in cinematic beauty.

moonspire - why does it hurt so bad? - sped up

“sometimes i wonder why i can’t let go” is an ambient track by Chad Nathan

sometimes i wonder why i can’t let go

ｗａｖｅ

ZI.1 - 'Imitazione' (reading by Mara Cimatoribus)*
ZI.2 - Titled
ZI.3 - 'Menschenbeifall' (reading by Anne Tetzlaff)
ZI.4 - Ulyssean Time
ZI.5 - 'Imitaciones' (reading by Rupert Clervaux)**

Available as a 12" with a foldout poster by Coline Cornélis,
and as a download.

Rupert Clervaux: drums, percussion, vibraphone, piano, synthesizers and samplers, 
with Stephen Warrington: piano on ‘Imitazione’, and Eben Bull: saxophone on ‘Titled’.

Artwork by Coline Cornélis.

*translation by Jonathan Galassi
**translation by Jason Weiss

Zibaldone I of CVX

Vaagner and Vienna Press presents (A Declaration)⁣⁣
⁣⁣
Amethyst⁣⁣
Beton Tåge⁣⁣
Burning Pyre⁣⁣
Body of Intrigue⁣⁣
Canadian Rifles⁣⁣
Civilistjävel!⁣⁣
Ceramic Flowers ⁣⁣
Fortunes Brine⁣⁣
Isorinne⁣⁣
J. Carter⁣⁣
Korea Undok Group⁣⁣
Lisa Lerkenfeldt⁣⁣
Moss Harvest⁣⁣
O. Vaupel ⁣⁣
Rosewater⁣⁣
Սայաթ-Նովա 
Sorim Byeon ⁣⁣
Summer Rites⁣⁣
⁣⁣
–––––––––––––––––⁣⁣
⁣
Available 1.12.19.⁣

Summer Rites _ Jeux

soil/farm related sounds - Trophicverses
Trophic Verses is an artistic exploration into the life and phenomena in and around of Earth's body of soil. The project spans a period of nearly four years and has commenced in summer 2018. Each year the project manifests in different kinds of artistic and curatorial practices, and launches new collaborations with other art, research and environmental initiatives.
~Teemu Lehmusruusu Media artist and project director

live oqko+Klammklang at OHM 7.11.19

Index - Kainos
iDEAL197 LP
Available soon
Distributed by Boomkat

‘Kainos’ is the debut album by Index, a new electronic music project by British musician Simon Scott, recorded in 2016 to 2019 in Los Angeles. Scott is a veteran British composer, field recordist, drummer and mastering engineer. 
Taking inspiration from the conflicting opinions of Brexit debates from the Houses Of Parliament, Scott fed these live streams into his modular synthesiser for improvising and composing with. These symbiotic jams formed the foundations for each Index track, with only the sparse nocturnal beats from a Roland 909 and transparent editing of each modular jam to accompany the synthesis. 

Scott’s association with shoegaze, as a member of UK band Slowdive, and ambient influences, present in his solo work on Touch and 12k, is replaced by the early electronics influence of Coil and Throbbing Gristle on Insides, early metal pioneers Black Sabbath rising on tracks such as Blackesh and Exit B. The throbbing 909 pulse on Sprinkles provides a Dubbed out groove that calls to mind Arthur Russell jamming with Basic Channel and the bottom heavy bass lines of dubstep on Countdown has is visceral and contains a brooding sample of Rachel Goswell’s (from Slowdive) voice sucking everything into the mix.
A key conceptual influence to Kainos is Luigi Russolo’s Futurist manifesto for music, The Art Of Noises who glorifies the use of “noise-sounds” and other nonconventional musical sounds. This captures the imagination of a modern culture immersed in ecological disaster (climate catastrophe) and surrounded by the constant noise of capitalism and consumerism. Other inspirations for this album were taken from literary and non-musical ideas such as Donna Haraway’s 2016 book ‘Staying with the trouble; Making kin in the Chthulucene ’ and its central tenet that “our task is to make trouble, to stir up potent response to devastating events on a damaged earth”.
Index is the musical expression of Scott’s profound discontent with the lack of equilibrium we have right now and how disconnected we have all become in relation to nature and each other. Kainos means “now, a time of beginnings, a time for ongoing, for freshness” (Haraway). It is born from ecological grief and political frustration at a time when electronic and ambient music is sitting too comfortably in safe areas of sonic experience with nothing to say and providing aural wallpaper that is safe and sterile.

INDEX - SPRINKLES (from "KAINOS" LP iDEAL197)

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

TR160 - Joachim Nordwall - 'FORMS OF ECSTASY'

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