Sonoris is a broad representation of the main trends in modern ambient music.

Pleq (Poland)
https://pleq.bandcamp.com

Dionisaf (USA)
https://dionisaf.bandcamp.com

Alessandro Barbanera (Italy) 
https://alessandrobarbanera.bandcamp.com

Sebby Kowal (USA) 
https://soundcloud.com/sebbykowalmusic

Michele Andreotti (Italy) 
https://soundcloud.com/michele-andreotti

Soloi Sounds (Japan)
https://soundcloud.com/monotone-orchestra

Chelidon Frame (Italy)
https://chelidonframe.bandcamp.com

Henrik Meierkord (Sweden) 
https://soundbread.se

NK x [Ųvás Gøød It] (Ukraine) 
https://nkxmusic.bandcamp.com

Kenji Katayose (Japan)
https://kenji-katayose.bandcamp.com

Merkaida (Russia)
https://soundcloud.com/merkaida

Adrian Lane (UK)
https://adrianlane.bandcamp.com

July in January (Russia)
https://julyinjanuary.bandcamp.com

CosmoMoose (UK)
https://cosmomoose.com

Sonidos Precarios (Chile)
https://sonidosprecarios-fs.bandcamp.com

Toni Dimitrov (Macedonia)
https://soundcloud.com/sound_00

Mastering by Dionis Afonichev (Dionisaf)
Photo by Dionis Afonichev (Dionisaf)
Artwork and cover design by Dionis Afonichev (Dionisaf)

https://www.chitrarecords.com

Sonoris

Góðr

“SILO” is a work composed for feedback-augmented bass drums and electronics, and was written for the Line Upon Line percussion trio.

Sonically, this work explores the complex acoustics of feedback systems, vibration and the transduction of sound through physical objects, and performer agency and control of chaotic systems.  Compositionally, this visceral and demanding piece presents a constantly fragmenting web of materials which blur and shift in and out of focus; exploring a world in which the microscopic and the monolithic are harshly juxtaposed, and in which dizzying chaos and stasis exist nearly simultaneously.    

Performance of “SILO” is facilitated through the use of a video score constructed out of materials shot and edited together in isolation.  The performers respond to the same video score in real-time using intersecting sets of rules and strict timing cues, yielding a performance practice similar to that of a foley artist.  The subtle differences in interpretation reveal a sonic spectrum that shifts wildly between coherence and disjunction.  From one perspective, the performers are simultaneously “siloed” apart from one another.  However, from another perspective, they are all bound to the same score and exist as one unified vertical sonic structure.

SILO (2023) // Performed by Line Upon Line

https://injazerorecords.bandcamp.com/album/re-leaf-t-rkiye-and-syria-earthquake-relief

https://phantomlimblabel.bandcamp.com/album/re-leaf-turkey-and-syria-earthquake

"re-LEAF’’ is a fundraising compilation commemorating over 50,000 lives lost and hundreds of thousands more injured and displaced following the disastrous earthquakes in Turkiye and Syria in February 2023.

Compiled by the Turkish electronic music artist Hüma Utku and Sine Büyüka of the London/Istanbul based label Injazero Records, co-released by the UK label Phantom Limb; ‘’re-LEAF’ features an eclectic roster of outstanding experimental electronic and ambient music artists, who dedicate a wide musical selection to this urgent cause.

All profits of this release will be donated to the Ahbap NGO in Turkiye, who currently lead a crucial, wide-range relief operation in an ethnically diverse area home to millions of immigrants and Syrian refugees.

ahbap.org

Mastering by Mark Dobson at CODA Mastering
We would like to extend our deepest thanks and gratitude to all the artists involved for kindly joining our efforts to raise funds for those affected by the earthquakes, Mark Dobson for the mastering and waiving his fees in favour of a donation and Özge Cöne for gifting the release with her artwork.

KAOSMOS - Düş ( V/A re​-​LEAF (T​ü​rkiye and Syria Earthquake Relief)

This seminal album of authentic traditional Portuguese village music recorded by ethnomusicologist Michel Giacometti, featuring inspired glimpses into a bygone world, is available for Flac and MP3 download on my blog:
https://music-republic-world-traditional.blogspot.com/2023/05/portugal-visages-du-portugal-le-chant.html

Portugal Folk Mix

The village stood on the slope of a steep hill and faced north-northwest, overlooking Wadi Salman. The Jerusalem-Jaffa highway ran immediately southwest of it, and dirt paths linked it to a group of neighboring villages. Although the identification of the village has been debated by biblical scholars, Lifta is believed to have been established on the site of Mey Neftoach, a source of water near Jerusalem. The site retained this name during the Roman period and was called Nephto during the Byzantine era. Almost nothing is known about the village in the early Islamic period; however, during the Crusades the village was referred to as Clepsta.

The fighting in Lifta, as well as the adjacent Jerusalem districts of Rumayma and Shaykh Badr, was triggered by the Haganah in the earliest days of the war. The History of the Haganah states that “Securing the western exit of the city [of Jerusalem] entailed the eviction of Arabs from Romema and Shaykh Badr. Afterwards, the Arabs also vacated Lifta.“ Other sources supply further details. According to Israeli historian Benny Morris, the Haganah fired the first shots in December 1947, killing the Palestinian owner of a filling station in Rumayma, on the grounds that he was suspected of informing Arab forces about the departure of Jewish convoys to Tel Aviv. The next day, a grenade was thrown at a Jewish bus.

Palestinian historian ‘Arif al-‘Arif adds that a coffeehouse in Lifta was attacked on 28 December with Sten guns and submachine-guns, and that six of the patrons were killed and seven wounded. The New York Times account puts the number of dead at five, adding that members of the Stern Gang halted their bus outside the cafe, sprayed the patrons with machine-gun fire and threw grenades.

Al-‘Arif writes that most of the residents of Lifta left after the attack on the coffeehouse and the rest evacuated soon afterwards. These actions were followed by a number of others, with the Haganah, Irgun Zvai Leumi, and Stern Gang repeatedly raiding both Rumayma and Lifta. In neighboring Shaykh Badr, the Haganah blew up the house of the mukhtar on 11 January, and two days later launched a second raid in which twenty houses were damaged. Most houses on the eastern periphery of Lifta were also demolished. Morris adds that the purpose of these demolitions was to turn the Palestinian residents out of their homes; to a large extent, this goal was achieved. By 7 February 1948, Jewish Agency chairman David Ben-Gurion expressed his satisfaction with the results of the attacks at a meeting of Mapai party leaders: “From your entry into Jerusalem through Lifta - Romema, through Mahane Yehuda, King George Street and Mea Sharim - there are no strangers. One hundred percent Jews.“

sraeli Settlements on Village Lands
The settlements of Mey Niftoach and Giv’at Sha’ul were built on village lands and now have become parts of the suburbs of Jerusalem.

The Village Today
Most of the houses remaining on the site are deserted, although some have been restored for the use of Jewish families. A basin that had been built around the spring in Wadi al-Shami lies in ruins. The mosque and the village club are still visible, north of the spring. Adjacent to the mosque, on the western side, is a cemetery covered with bushes and wild grass. The village orchard of  fig and almond trees is located at the bottom of a wadi along a stream flowing from the spring. Jewish families have moved into three of the old village houses. The ruins of other houses are visible in various parts of the site. In 1987, the Israeli Nature Reserves Authority planned to restore the “long-abandoned village“ and and to turn it in an open-air natural history and study center that would “stress the Jewish roots of the site.“ This project, with an estimated cost of $10 million, would be financed from donations.

BedouinDrone - Lifta

"Magnet Blues" presents Zhu Wenbo and Zhu Songjie’s unique and utterly bizarre take on American blues, as if filtered through layered variations of darkness. Throughout the recording, we hear barely audible vocals, minimalist, smart, and subtle guitar work, and the folkish atmosphere of what sounds like distant train activity and dying radios. Instrumentation is notable here: Songjie uses the peculiar Casio EG-5 electric guitar, with a built-in cassette deck, while also playing harmonica. Wenbo plays a Fisher-Price toy cassette player, sings, and also plays harmonica. Throughout bursts of noise and rustling midrange timbres, Zhu and Zhu navigate an understated, focused, and dreamlike realm of song and texture.

NTR078 - Zhu Wenbo - Zhu Songjie - Magnet Blues - "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean"

2023-05-28

NLS - 2023 - 05 - 28  Birdsong

Low empty tower

A new beginnings

pray2day

Note

Douglas McCausland is a composer / performer, sound designer, and digital artist whose visceral and often chaotic works explore the extremes of sound, technology, and the digital medium.

As an artist, he researches and leverages the intersections of numerous technologies and creative practices, such as real-time electronic music performance with purpose-built interfaces, spatial audio, interactive systems, intermedia art, musical applications of machine-learning, experimental sound design, and hardware-hacking.

Described as “Tremendously powerful, dark, and sometimes terrifying…” (SEAMUS) and “Ruthlessly visceral…” (The Wire), his works have been performed internationally, including features at Sonorities, SEAMUS, the San Francisco Tape Music Festival, MISE-EN Music Festival, Klingt Gut!, Sounds Like THIS!, NYCEMF, Sonicscape, and Ars Electronica.  Recent collaborations include artists such as bassist Aleksander Gabryś, cellist Seth Parker Woods, the Quasar Saxophone Quartet, the TAK Ensemble, and vocal ensemble Variant 6.  His work is available through various online platforms, and on SEAMUS, Plyta Z Audiomatu, and Jikken Records.

Recent honors include an award of distinction in the 2021 Prix Ars Electronica for his piece “Convergence”, winning 1st-Prize in the 2021 ASCAP/SEAMUS commission competition, the gold-prize award for “contemporary computer music” in the Verband Deutscher Tonmeister Student 3D Audio Production Competition, and being awarded the runner-up nomination for the International Confederation of Electroacoustic Music's 2019 CIME Prix. 

Douglas is currently the Technology and Applied Composition (TAC) Studio Manager at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.  He holds a DMA in music composition from Stanford University, where he studied with Chris Chafe, Patricia Alessandrini, Jaroslaw Kapuscinski, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano, and Mark Applebaum.  He additionally holds a MSc in Digital Composition and Performance from the University of Edinburgh, a MM in Music Composition from Michigan State University, and a BM in Music Composition, Saxophone Performance, and Music Education from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.