Purchase: bit.ly/3wjrs0f
Catalog #: GN65
Apr. 16, 2021
LP+DIGI

Matthew Sage is about seeing the big picture, but focused through the most intimate and personal lens possible. Best exemplified on the gauzy, cartographical opus 'A Singular Continent', as well as his impulsively meditative Geographic North debut 'Catch a Blessing', Sage’s imagination yields fully realized sonic suites to worlds both imaginary and referential to his own. 

Now, the Chicago-based composer, producer, label owner, and publisher returns with 'The Wind of Things', a personal and pastoral oblation to the wild and wind-blown waters and mountains, both from Sage’s own memory and writ large. Absent are the processed sounds and filters that have come to define Sage's work; the album finds Sage stripping away the synthesized sounds that alchemied his past work into aural gold, instead favoring an entirely acoustic and natural 
palette.

Sage called upon a myriad of long-time collaborators, who together form the aptly-titled Spinnaker Ensemble (featuring Patrick Shiroishi, Chaz Pyrmek, Nate Henricks, Chris Jusell, Allison Sheldon, Martin Albertz, David Hirsch, Matt Wenzel, and Ang Wilson) to help realize his vision and further the melodic potential of the living and breathing field recordings that permeate the album. Tapping into an intimate sense of self, these field recordings derive from natural places that are significant to Sage. Lakes, mountains, and rivers he grew up boat-racing on and swimming in; tall fields of grass in rural Nebraska near his family’s birthplaces; wildlife on the pond of his in-laws home in Texas; the harbors and beaches of Lake Michigan that he frequents; all serving as places of occupation for these compositions to live in and blow through.

Opener “Cloud Plexus” is a fog-laden float in a calm lake of unrestrained optimism. The serenity soon glissades into “Harbor Dive”, a shimmering and elegant rift of sloshing harmonies. “Launching Mossing Scow” finds its flourish in the flotsam, tinkering with rusted refrains and oblong melodies. The action quickens with “Zephyr: Ponderosa Pollen,” charting a speedy course with only a shoddy sonic sextant as its guide. “Starboard Reach” offers a moment of playful clarity before “Luffing Adrift” and “Sail-Shaped Light,” a murky pool of darkness and light that ripples into the ether.

“Slipping the Mooring/Pond” opens the B-side in an amorphous din of familiar auditory accoutrements that gather into a single, slow-motion blur. “Dazzling Shallow Bay,” “Portside Mark,” and “Tell Tail Tale” play a dreamlike suite of a waterside piano finding its fins and diving below the waves, discovering its blithe buoyancy, and exploring the depths unencumbered by the weight of the world. The hopeful meditation of “Spinnaker on a Southerly” serves as a calm before the (rain)storm that is “Hiked Way Out,” a welcome reflection on past, present, and future maritime melancholia.

The Wind of Things

Buy LP/DIGI

M. Sage - "Launching Mossy Scow"

M. Sage - "Harbor Dive"

M. Sage - "Cloud Plexus"

Cloistered Anatomy

Online session with Mr.Sunahara
Melodion :me
Synth:Mr.snahara https://soundcloud.com/sunahara1976

Beautiful soundscape!!

Enjoy

Lost City In Color -Syncroom session with Mr.Sunahara

Ad_renaline

LP released by ISSUE Project Room's Distributed Objects imprint on September 18, 2015

Order at http://issueprojectroom.org/distributed-objects/thiefth

Originally released on CD in 2005 and out of print for a decade, Thiefth is the first of four collaborations between poet Susan Howe and musician David Grubbs. This first LP edition, a limited run of 100 copies, is accompanied by a special edition letterpress print produced by Grenfell Press. Howe and Grubbs were first brought together when the Fondation Cartier in Paris proposed a collaborative performance. Grubbs had been a dedicated reader of Howe’s for more than a decade, and the opportunity to work with Howe’s poetry and her voice immediately intrigued.  In late 2003, the two set about to create performance versions of “Thorow” and “Melville’s Marginalia,” the two of Howe’s longer poems that comprise Thiefth.

Preview - Susan Howe and David Grubbs: Theifth (DO04 LP)

snf04 : giuseppe ielasi "even when they speak of space" out dec.15th 2017.

music for whistling, microphone and digital degradation. 
recorded in november 2016 and august 2017. 
to be played at low volume.

www.senufoeditions.com

snf04 : giuseppe ielasi "even when they speak of space" part 1

Extract from 'Empire' EP, out FEB 14, 2019 on Shelter Press
Order: https://shelterpress.bandcamp.com/album/empire

SHELTER PRESS / SP107

—
Following the release of his album Stadium, out on Shelter Press last October, Eli Keszler returns with a brand new EP, Empire. Recorded between September and December 2018, this three-track EP is about finding stillness, tranquility and beauty in a dystopian landscape. In some ways, it continues the concepts explored on Stadium since it's also an EP inspired by cityscapes, architecture and, as Eli himself notes, "the illusion of order during declines." 

Eli started touring for Stadium at the start of October 2019 with a performance at legendary New York venue, The Kitchen, the day before he orchestrated a five-camera shoot — check out this remarkable concert-length film: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNLdBYvpiJk). 

Eli will continue to tour starting this month with three solo performances as part of Kevin Beasley's exhibition “A View of the Landscape” commissioned by The Whitney Museum in New York on Saturday January 26th at 6pm, 7pm and 8pm. 

He'll also be performing live at Mutek, Phi Center, Montreal on February 23rd, Fort Worth Modern Art Museum on February 28th (in duo with Nate Boyce), Gnration, Braga, Portugal on March 29th and Rewire Festival, Den Hague on March 30th. You can also catch him performing in Oneohtrix Point Never's band at Pitchfork Midwinter 2019, Chicago on February 17th and Myriad, The Roundhouse, London on March 8th. And, he'll be teaching at CAMP in the Pyrenees in April. 

For those new to Eli, his sound lies at the intersection of jazz, improvisation, fusion, modern classical and electronics. Although the music press has often tried to identify his work in terms of specific genres, he remains boldly on his own musical and aesthetic path. 

Stadium received record of the year from Boomkat and placed in countless end of year lists. Since copies of Stadium are sold out, a repress of the album will be released the same day as Empire on February 14th.

Empire

Enter the Bristle Strum

ELI KESZLER 'ENTER THE BRISTLE STRUM' (SP107)

Schleswig-Holstein is a thin land bridge between the mighty hull of the North German lowlands and the long pointed head of the Jutland peninsula, with the gentle Baltic Sea on one side, and the rough North Sea on the other. Numerous lakes, deciduous forests and wide corridors have shaped this region since its formation during the last ice age. The varied landscape, covered with fertile clay and littered with countless large and small granite blocks, is the legacy of the glaciers.

Fascinated by the cultural and geographical history of his homeland, Phil Struck recorded sonic impressions after hikes, wanderings, daydreams, historical readings and childhood memories. Schleswig-Holstein Aufnahmen is the distillation of these diaristic recordings, made between 2017 and 2019, using a sampler, synthesizer, and worn flea market records. Much like the cyclical musings of W.G. Sebald, or Cluster’s pastoral electronic miniatures, these works are intrinsically tied to the landscape of which they were born. The wobble and crackle of the samples is evocative of the craggy scenery of the lowlands, and also describes the patinated atmosphere of memory, found in the work of Vladislav Delay, Pole, Caretaker, Philip Jeck, Ken Jacobs, and Bill Morrison. The painting adorning the album cover was done by Struck’s great grandfather who was also seduced by this meandering windswept land.

Limited edition of 100 LPs with risograph printed artwork.

Tracklist:

A1 Horizonte (Intro) (2:12) 
A2 Baizubai (5:41) 
A3 Speckenbeck (2:05) 
A4 Grube (7:00) 
A5 Feuermachen (2:52) 
A6 Weiher (3:30)  

B1 Sommertage (6:45) 
B2 Wogen (11:24) 
B3 Jens (3:49)

Buy Limited Edition LP: https://www.seance-centre.com/shop/phil-struck-schleswig-holstein-aufnahmen

Buy Digital: https://philstruck.bandcamp.com/album/schleswig-holstein-aufnahmen

Phil Struck - Baizubai (21SC)

It makes less sense to say that Maths Balance Volumes formed in 2002 than to say that, since that year, they have been collapsing into something, again and again. Just as the three members fell together with no plan or allegiance to any style or genre, each track falls together as the broken pieces of songs and sounds meet to make a temporary and frightening whole. Things make their way into a Maths Balance Volumes song when they don’t or won’t work anymore, when they have escaped their owner, or hidden away where nobody is supposed to find them. When things fall together—when the wooden creaks and radio hisses gather for a minute alongside bass lines and melancholy voice—there is a beauty that sounds like it was made by nobody and for nobody.

The city of Mankato, Minnesota has been the steady gathering point for the band since its beginnings. Mankato had always provided an ominous backdrop: built on stolen Dakota land, the city was the site of the largest mass execution in US history, when 38 Dakota prisoners were hanged on in 1862 in a straightforward act of genocide. But in their music of the past twelve years, Maths Balance Volumes has made music in and of a hometown overshadowed and unsettled by its history, music for a world in which things have never been okay. Traditional American folk genres seep in at times, but never as the incarnation of a living popular culture—only as ghosts or unliving effigies.

A Year Closer tells us already in its title what its theme is: approaching death, time ticking away and getting closer with each track of the record. We are told in the first song that our protective mask isn’t working, warned by the storm clouds and a ticking bedroom clock in “Dark Skies.” We hear fears of death approaching in the sad words exchanged by lovers who see they will run out of time, or already have, as in “We Had Time” or the romantic lament of “When I Drink.” In “Work Last Monday,” all of life passes with cold automatism in an “office apartment,” as a narrator broods over early onset dementia, remembers the details of rituals for respecting the dead, and thinks of how a hole is opening up in reality itself. The singer of “Over the Hill” isn’t apparently afraid of growing older and becoming a “man,” but only leaks a few disjointed details of his plans for disappearing, collapsing, turning into a tree, and finding a home. “Angel of Mercy” tries to resurrect the Christian promise of a life after death, anxiously asking if anyone is up there waiting for us after the oblivion of this world. 

But these are just the moments when A Year Closer speaks in words clear and audible enough to be understood. The giddy, agitated voice of “The Price” speaks only to itself in a private language, hidden away in a tin can somewhere. Musically, A Year Closer is a series of pieces that make symphonies out of separate processes of decay and disappearance: unidentified cracking and creaking objects, broken equipment, and lost melodies that seem to have escaped other songs and wandered into the room looking for a place to hide. These are the moments that the listener of Maths Balance Volumes always knows are coming, waits for, and settles in temporarily for a moment of repose. Maybe this is the meaning of A Year Closer: while waiting for the worst, things come together, a “we” with no name but with a rhythm, a tenuous but definite harmony to share as the clock ticks. Even if, when the lights are turned on, it turns out nobody was there. - Paul Buchholz

Taken from PP48 A Year Closer LP coming soon

M. Sage - "Harbor Dive"

GeoNorth

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