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From JOYFULTALK • Familiar Science [cst163]

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JOYFULTALK • "Take It To The Grave"

When asked to describe the circumstances that influenced her beautifully fraught new work, Berlin-based musician Annika Henderson—better known simply as Anika—quickly articulates a set of feelings and unpredictable circumstances that are familiar to anyone who tried to make art—or simply tried to live through—the recent global pandemic. “It’s a moment caught in time,” she says of Change, her much-anticipated new record. Given that it has been 11 years since the release of her last solo album, 2010 cult-favorite Anika, the artist suddenly found herself with a lot to say. “This album had been planned for a little while and the circumstances of its inception were quite different to what had been expected. This colored the album quite significantly. The lyrics were all written there on the spot. It’s a vomit of emotions, anxieties, empowerment, and of thoughts like—How can this go on? How can we go on?”

Having worked collaboratively in the past with the likes of BEAK> and Mexico City’s Exploded View, Change was ultimately the product of necessity. “After recording the initial ideas alone at Klangbild studios in Berlin, a few months later and by some stroke of luck, Mr. Martin Thulin of Exploded View, managed to make his way over from Mexico, to co-produce the album with me and play some live drums and bass,” recalls Anika. “Between Reality Baitz and Impression Recordings in Berlin, we managed to get the album together.

The intimacy of its creation and a palpable sense of global anxiety are seemingly baked into the DNA of Change. Spread across nine tracks, the central feeling of the record is one of heightened frustration buoyed by guarded optimism. The songs offer skittering, austere electronic backdrops reminiscent of classic Broadcast records or High Scores-era Boards of Canada, playing them against Anika’s remarkable voice—Nico-esque, beautifully plaintive, and—in regards to the record’s subject matter—totally resolute. Incantatory tracks like “Naysayer” and “Never Coming Back” are both, as Anika explains them, both a call to arms and a warning. “Never Coming Back” was written after reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring,” she explains. “I was living in the old East countryside outside of Berlin, where there seemed to be no shortage of birds. Apparently their numbers have dropped significantly, but it is one of these changes that we never really stop and notice. We take things for granted, until it’s too late. With all this other noise going on, care for the environment has quickly been moved to the back-burner. So long as we get what we want NOW and on demand, who cares about whether we are taking care of the future?”

Change

from "TSS TSS" album - OUT 2nd february 2015
MORE : http://shop.bornbadrecords.net/album/tss-tss

CHOCOLAT "TSS TSS"

Never The Same

Suzanne Ciani
Buchla Concerts 1975
FKR082LP
Finders Keepers Records

Finders Keepers invite you to witness the incredible first ever Buchla synthesiser concerts/demonstrations providing a distinctive feminine alternative to The Silver Apples Of The Moon if they had ever been presented in phonographic form. This is history in the remaking.

This spring Finders Keepers Records are proud to release an archival project that not only redefines musical history but boasts genuine claim to the overused buzzwords such as pioneering, maverick, experimental, groundbreaking and esoteric, while questioning social politics and the evolution of music technology as we’ve come to understand it. To describe this records as a game-changer is an understatement. This record represents a musical revolution, a scientific benchmark and a trophy in the cabinet of counter culture creativity. This record is a triumphant yardstick in the synthesiser space race and the untold story of the first woman on the proverbial moon. While pondering the early accolades of this record it’s daunting to learn that this record was in fact not a record at all… It was a manifesto and a gateway to a new world, that somehow never quite opened. If the unfamiliar, modernistic, melodic, pulses, tones and harmonics found on this 1975 live presentation/grant application/educational demonstration had been placed in a phonographic context alongside the promoted work of Morton Subotnick, Walter Carlos or Tomita then the name Suzanne Ciani and her influence would have already radically changed the shape, sound and gender of our record collections. Hopefully there is still chance.

In short, Suzanne was a self-imposed twenty-year-old employee of the Buchla modular synthesiser company, San Francisco’s neck and neck contender to New York’s Moog. Buchla was run by a community of festival freaks and academic acid eaters whose roots in new age lifestyles and the reinvention of art and music replaced the business acumen enjoyed by its likeminded East Coasters. In the eyes of the consumer the creative refusal to adopt rudimentary facets like a piano keyboard controller rendered the Buchla synthesiser the more obscure stubborn sister of the synth marathon, steering these incredible units away from the mainstream into the homes and studios of free music aficionados, art house composers and die-hard revolutionaries. Championed and semi-showcased by composer Morton Subotnick on his albums The Bull and Silver Apples Of The Moon, Buchla’s versatility began to open the minds of a new generation, but the high-end design features and no-compromise modus operandi was often confused with incompatibility and, in the pulsating shadow of Moog’s marketing, the revolution would not be televised nor patronised. Suzanne Ciani, as one of the very few female composers on the frontline (and also providing the back line) did not lose faith.

These “concerts” are the epitome of rare music technology historic documents, performed by a real musician whose skills and academic education in classical composition already outweighed her male synthesiser contemporaries of twice her age. At the very start of her fragile career these recordings are nothing short of sacrificial ode to her mentor and machine, sonic pickets of the revolution and love letters to an absolutely genuine vision of and ‘alternative’ musical future. In denouncing her own precocious polymathmatic past in a bid to persuade the world to sing from a new hymn sheet, Suzanne Ciani created a bi-product of never before heard music that would render the pigeon holes “ambient” and “futuristic” utterly inadequate. Providing nothing short of an entirely different feminine take on the experimental “records” of Morton Subotnick and proving to a small, judgmental audience and jury the true versatility of one of the most radical and idiosyncratic musical instruments of the 20th century. These recordings have not been heard since then.

Suzanne Ciani - Buchla Concerts 1975 (Excerpts)

taken from «Im Sinne der Zeit»
released 2014 on TROUBLE IN MIND
http://troubleinmindrecs.com

Les Grecks

01 Use Your Muscles

CHAM-PANG
Tant pis 81-82

www.tnzr.org/tnzr055

A1. Bella V
A2. Oriental intrigue
A3. Ziggurat
A4. It may be acid rain, my love
B1. Tant pis pour les heures de sommeil
B2. Presqu'heureuse
B3. Come se dice

————————————————————

Best known as an electronic duo, Cham-pang became a fixture of the Montreal new wave scene in 1981 with the release of a two-song EP on YUL Records (“Tantum Ergo” b/w “Ne mourrez pas”). The session featured Men without Hats’ Allan McCarthy on electronics and Yvel Champagne on vocals, although the group also depended on contributions from Mario Spezza of Rational Youth and Pyer Desrochers. A multidisciplinary artist with a singular voice and an arresting presence, Champagne then joined force with experimentalist Bernard Gagnon whose works at the time ranged from free improvisation to electroacoustic music. He recruited former bandmate Angel Calvo, of new wave outfits Vex and Rational Youth, as well as Robert M. Lepage, whom he knew from his early years with the Experimental Music Workshop. Long-time Cham-pang collaborator Pierre-Laurier Lamarche and Daniel Lajoie completed the group, helping give it a new direction both sonically and performance-wise.

This LP contains material composed ahead of a defining concert at the Cégep du Vieux-Montréal’s Tritorium in April of 1982.

Chroniques (Reviews)

** Sortie officielle (official release date) 25-10-17 **

"Bella V" (Cham-pang : Tant Pis 81-82)

Turmoil

Lucrecia Dalt - Tar (Jan Jelinek Remix)

Moon Wheel — རྡོ་རྗེ་རྣལ་འབྱོར་མ་

We are an independent record label based in Montréal, releasing experimental music we care about in the most careful ways we can.

JOYFULTALK • "Take It To The Grave"

Constellation Records