Taken from 'Fringe' LP/Download (E064, Ecstatic 03/09/2021)

A gorgeous swell of intimate soundscaping from Felisha Ledesma on this simmering stunner for Ecstatic, despatching two extended, richly absorbing pieces weft from everyday detritius; synths, strings, voicemail, found sounds - hitting a similar spot for us as Ulla’s diaristic 'inside means inside me’ but with a more defined play of sound-as-light that gently and memorably tugs at the earlobes and heartstrings. 

Exploring a music of presence and ultra subtle inference, ‘Fringe’ is the 2nd release by Ledesma, student of Berlin's estimable Universität der Künste, following from a debut for Enmossed x Psychic Liberation earlier this year. Using AMQR - a software synthesiser built by Ledesma together with Ess Mattisson - both pieces here shimmer with elusive timbres that occupy a realm that feels lost between worlds - neither electronic nor acoustic, but more a sort of observational sound that radiates togetherness and warmth. 

Operating at insightful levels of synaesthesia, Ledesma poetically turns ostensibly humdrum sources into clouds of smoke - emails, voicenotes, walking along the water, a poem attached to an email, walking alone in New York during lockdown, going for a swim at sunset in the desert - all turn into a smudge of memory. When ‘Beamsplitters’ opens with a tangible human presence - a voicemail from a friend - it startles with its earthly pull, eventually getting lost in a tangled spool of found sound leaving just a trace of iridescent, intimate reverie. 

On ‘Golden Mirror’ Felisha gently diffracts a lonesome guitar phrase into a humming thizz with a steeply uncanny ability to jog the memory in a similar way to how olfactory stimulus can conjure feelings of nostalgia. It’s a trick familiar from an emergent new realm of lower case composers creating something like submerged, small scale symphonies that work counter to notions of classical excess or anodyne ambient, instead focusing on microcosmic, highly peronalised sort of worldbuilding that’s impenetrable, yet somehow entirely open.

Felisha Ledesma - Golden Mirror [E064]

Taken from the album 'Quixotism' released as CD and Download.

Oren Ambarchi 'Quixotism Part 5' (eMEGO 202)

About winning the lotto in my dream last night and I bought 2 lotto tickets the morning.  

Lotto Dream Terrorzine C3 Mind Melt

BEATRICE DILLON - Drum programming, electronics, synthesizer, bass guitar, field recordings

RUPERT CLERVAUX - Vibraphone, drums, percussion, field recordings, additional drum programming

and EBEN BULL - Pocket trumpet and zither

The Same River Twice - Beatrice Dillon & Rupert Clervaux

Music composed and produced by Caterina Barbieri between September 2015 and January 2016. Mixed at Elektronmusikstudion in
Stockholm (SE). Composed with an ER-101 Indexed Quad 
Sequencer and a Verbos Harmonic Oscillator. 
Images by Giovanni Brunetto 
Photography by Angelo Jaroszuk Bogasz 
Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi 
First edition pressing of 500 double LPs packaged in a gatefold jacket. An edition of 200 sets on transparent blue vinyl is available for Important mailorder customers: http://importantrecords.com/imprec/imprec449
Bandcamp: https://caterinabarbieri.bandcamp.com/album/patterns-of-consciousness
"...has an imperial, exacting beauty." (The Wire)
“…few albums have hit us as hard as Caterina Barbieri’s 70-minute opus, Patterns Of Consciousness. On her debut full-length, Barbieri commands tsunami-height waves of arpeggiated analog synths." (Fact Mag)
"Patterns Of Consciousness finds Caterina Barbieri at her best, elegantly moving between melodically pleasant yet twisted sequences and comforting, reassuring sonic spaces. Every piece, while given a singular identity, is part of the bigger picture: a work of art that will push you, pull you, and then eventually leave you with your back against the wall once you get to the last track. " Alessandro Cortini (Nine Inch Nails)

Gravity that Binds

Ursula Bogner: Winkel Pong
Format: 7” Vinyl/DL
Label#: faitiche15
Release date: Sept 8th 2017
 
Faitiche is delighted to announce the release of a new Ursula Bogner record (faitiche15). Winkel Pong contains three previously unreleased pieces from the archive of the sound researcher who died in 1994. In 2008, Jan Jelinek put together a first album from Bogner’s tape archive (CD/LP Recordings 1969-1988, faitiche01). A second followed in 2011, compiled this time by Andrew Pekler (CD/LP Sonne = Blackbox, accompanying the book of the same name with texts, photographs and Bogner’s graphic oeuvre). For Winkel Pong the tape archive was passed on to Lucrecia Dalt. The Berlin-based Colombian sound artist and musician chose three tracks from the 1980s (exact dates unknown), editing the tape recordings for their release on Winkel Pong.
 
Gundrun Gut (Malaria!, Einstürzende Neubauten), an activist and reluctant chronicler of Berlin’s underground scene since the 1980s, has worked with Lucrecia Dalt. She is also familiar with Ursula Bogner’s work. Reason enough to ask her for an interview:
 
Jan Jelinek: Gudrun, how does it feel to be constantly obliged to talk about the 1980s Berlin underground as someone who was there at the time?
 
Gudrun Gut: I’ve learned to live with it as there are clearly too few people who witnessed it first-hand. Maybe it’s even important to do these interviews as a woman – so that someone actually says that women, too, have written music history. Men tend not to mention this. But it’s true, people do always ask the same questions.
 
JJ: Did you know about Ursula Bogner in the 1980s? Did you ever meet her?
 
GG: No, I never met Ursula Bogner in person and I only discovered her in 2008 thanks to Faitiche. But that’s no surprise: firstly, I don’t know every single woman artist, and secondly, far too many women artists never see the light of day. In the male-dominated art and music market, women are not considered important – or worse still, they are not understood. Look at artists like Sonia Delaunay, Eva Hesse, Bebe Baron, Delia Derbyshire and Daphne Oram. Some of them have now been discovered – but only recently. A lot has changed in the last few years: there is a growing awareness of art and music made by women.
 
JJ: But isn’t it annoying that the conventional distribution of roles still applies? One example: in many articles, Ursula Bogner has been presented as an “electronic housewife”.
 
GG: When Ursula Bogner is referred to as an electronic housewife, then sadly that reflects the situation of many women artists at the time. Women could only pursue artistic activities in private – transcendence was reserved for men. This has still not been overcome. But today, the home has become a site of professional production for all. I’m talking about bedroom producers: it is totally normal to make art and music at home. And that makes things interesting, because “working at home” is no longer associated solely with women.
 
JJ: For Winkel Pong, Lucrecia Dalt compiled and remixed three pieces from the Bogner archive. You know Lucrecia and you’ve already worked with her. How did you meet?
 
GG: I met Lucrecia through MySpace – I think it was 2007. Back then she was still living in Medellin, Colombia. Lucrecia’s father made loop machines for her that she still uses. The Sound of Lucrecia was part of my 4 Women no Cry compilation series on Monika Enterprise, each with four producers from different countries. She’s great fun to watch as a performer because she has a unique sense of rhythm and feel for music. Above all I’m impressed by her sustained approach as an artist, someone who can and does think around corners. I’m thinking specifically of her album Ou, for which she ploughed her way through post-war German cinema, using it as a source of inspiration for a soundtrack. This is proof that she thinks like an engineer – so it makes perfect sense that she would want to explore the work of Ursula Bogner.
 
Berlin, 2017

Ursula Bogner: Atmosphärische Energie (edited by Lucrecia Dalt)

Folklore of Plants Vol.II - Venefic Garden

Arts and culture practitioners and organisations Declare a Climate and Ecological Emergency. See @CultureDeclares 

download to your phone, for participants in the Culture Declares in London ceremony, 3rd April 

'Sonum Vocis Magnum Parvo

This score comprises of both an amplified through composed piece of music and accompanying acoustic bells to be performed as a promenade. Shifting, phasing, moving like a sonic cloud.  Bells are traditionally used to call communities together, to mark the passing of time, to raise the alarm, we wanted to use these modest handbells, intrinsically a small sound, but when multiplied, the gathering of a small sound makes a big sound. Compassionate, compelling - we will be heard!  Sonum Vocis Magnum is a play on words the literal translation to Latin of Small Sound, Big Sound, but therein lies the voice - voices of the people, culture declares…  'Mira Calix 


written and produced by Mira Calix and Ed Handley

Sonum Vocis Magnum Parvo

track from Miaux's 'Black Space, White Cloud' LP

Miaux : Lunar Surface

"Reiterations" by First Tone from "Reactions" 2xLP/Digital due out October 2019.

"Reiterations" by First Tone

Ecstatic Computation 

Bookings: hg@outer-agency.com

Gravity that Binds

caterina barbieri