Salvation EP
Jor-G & Spyro X. 
Remixers Javier Ho, .JIMi. and John Ov3rblast.


Vinyl and digital release

Salvation ( John Ov3rblast Reprise Remix )

and there I remained unknowing
transcending all knowledge

I Entered Into Unknowing

Degradation Loops was a 16 day composition that gradually and completely 'bit crushes' my 2015 album Yellow Bell. Produced for a group show at the 55 Sydenham Rd, Marrickville gallery in Sydney, a process of sonic destruction unfolds in response to visual artists destroying and reassembling their work, to create new work, and to question the dominance of commercial imperatives within art. Here is a 14'48" time lapse edit of the 16 day composition, 2016.

Degradation Loops_55 Sydenham Rd Marrickville

Body Consonance

BYRON WESTBROOK - What We Mean When We Say Body Language

Degradia (2018) is a sound work by Anni Puolakka and Miša Skalskis, originally made for an exhibition of the same name. They were inspired by some old Finnish poems in which vulva plays a central part and becomes a powerful character of its own right. Parts of Degradia are translated and altered lines from these poems, for example, where vulva is likened with a biting dog's jaws and a running wolf's gums.

www.annipuolakka.com
https://soundcloud.com/ang3l_sp1der

Anni Puolakka and Miša Skalskis – Degradia

Pierre Bastien orchestrates his meccano marionettes on Tinkle Twang ‘n Tootle to form the charming imaginative ensemble that he’s been known for since the late 80s. 

Equal parts composer, inventor, mechanic, and performer - Bastien translates his imagination into instruments and compositions that defy any musical categories. Whether it’s preparing instruments like playing a trumpet underwater or through a kazoo, using belt-driven motors and mechanical components to perform cumbersome yet surprisingly musical operations on traditional instruments and household items, or using a fan to hit the strings of a kundi harp with flowing paper - Bastien’s love for tone, rhythm, noise and harmony is poetically reflected across his quite extensive oeuvre. 

Playful and melancholic, the sound sculptures that Bastien invents and plays with are partly inspired by the work of Raymond Roussel, a visionary French author who at the turn of the 20th century wrote a unique form of literature which inspired and guided artists from the surrealist and pataphysical movement and was declared by Michel Foucault as one of structuralism's founding fathers. On that note, the influence of literature and syntax on Bastien’s work cuts all the way through to the palindromes he uses for his track titles - which, much like his machines, infinitely loop. 

True to it’s adorable title, Tinkle Twang ‘n Tootle is a music box of unfolding whimsical structures, half broken rhythms, detuned harmonies, and fantastical sound collages that evoke a childlike sense of wonder and an urge to explore the spaces in between the sounds.

Tinkle Twang 'n Tootle

Pierre Bastien - Pet Step [from Tinkle Twang 'n Tootle]

"Stele" out June 21st via Perfect Aesthetics.

https://perfectaesthetics.bandcamp.com/album/stele

Stele

Stele, side A

Taken from the album 'Cylene' released as 2LP and Download.

Cylene

François J. Bonnet & Stephen O'Malley 'Première noire' (EMEGO 262)

R. Elizabeth is the recording name of London-based artist and academic Rachael Finney. Every And All We Voyage On is her
solo recording project’s second full length and is a focused distillation of her practice in sound art and her knack for pop
minimalism. It follows a long sold out release on Where To Now? Records and a prolonged period in which she concentrated
on artist residencies exploring her interest in recorded sound and voice. Immediate and natural, Every And All We Voyage On
manages to sound joyful while tackling complex themes, handling everything with an improvisatory touch. The songs are full of
air and light; infectious, melodic and off-the-cuff.
Recorded using a single 80s Casio keyboard, reel-to-reel tape manipulation, piano and vocal, Finney’s practice with R. Elizabeth
belies a studious attention to detail. Her academic work is often focused on analysing sounds – particularly voice and language –
divorced from meaning and R. Elizabeth challenges the listener with overtly emotional tropes: sweeping portmento lap-steel
guitar keyboard tones on Back From Ten suggest a nostalgic melancholy when it intersects with the narrator closing her eyes,
realising she has nothing left to give. The lilting vocal cloaked in reverb is disarming, with an almost child-like surrender to the
undertow of the song. On Tragedy And Trade there’s a rough grace to the mixing with visceral, manipulated tape sounding like
the artists’ hands are literally in the speakers wrenching the melodies in mid-air. When it intersects with chants about the “gaps
and the silences” it has an eerie, hauntological effect. R. Elizabeth is constantly playing with sound and song: a Wonderland of
perceived emotion, the listener’s perception of what they’re hearing constantly in flux, it’s deceptively simple and deserving of
repetitive listening.
Cut Piano opens the album and introduces a documentary-feel which the album upholds through-out. It’s the sound of the artist
mangling a tape of her own piano recording, twisting it out of shape and suggesting a bend in reality. We’re listening to the artist
becoming a ghost in her own machine, a 3rd or 4th generation copy of an emotion rendered a long time ago, chilling and playful at
the same time. An Image Is Different bursts out of this with a sunny Casiotone beat, a melodic contrast that also introduces
Finney’s vocal. It flitters between a gorgeous repetitive melody ruminating about the nature of reality and a seemingly careless,
conversational tone. The effect is joyful, but you don’t really know why. The lyrics instruct someone (you? The artist?) to “go
outside and break someone’s neck, make it feel so real” before ending with R. Elizabeth nonchalantly stating “I dunno, to be
honest I don’t really care” as if on the phone to someone they’re bored with. It would be jarring if it wasn’t so catchy and uplifting.
The title track is a slow-tempo meditation with droning synths providing the background to slow, dragging tape sounds and
grounding, just-out-of-focus vocals bunkering down in the mix. The methodology suggests the work of Broadcast: there’s a
loping bassline that propels the track forward but the duet/duel between Finney’s haunted vocal and the soloing tape warble
provides aural snakes for the listener’s ear to follow.

R. Elizabeth - SPIRITUAL TO SYMPHONY (from Every And All We Voyage On)

buy cassette/digital nicemusiclabel.bandcamp.com

taken from Simon J Karis 'Piovve' NM039

Simon J Karis returns to Nice Music with Piovve, his first release for the label since 2017’s Madrugada. Following from recent releases for Altered States and Vienna Press, Piovve offers up six tracks demonstrating the development and deepening of Karis’ obliquely emotive approach to electronic murk. Floating on clouds of tape hiss in smeared VHS fidelity, Karis explores a range of formal approaches, from the burbling monophonic synth lines and spoken text of opener ‘Infinite July’ to the four-on-the-floor kickdrum and wistful music-box melodies of half-remembered rave closer ‘Shale Pardon’. In between we’re treated to the drumless motorik propulsion of ‘To Think of You’, which calls to mind Moebius and Beerbohm’s Double Cut in its woozy rhythmic insistence before the mood is hijacked by a distorted devotional vocal sample that abruptly reroutes proceedings from the morose to the ecstatic. The opposite path is travelled in ‘On Ardour’ where jittering synth pads toy with euphoria before descending into pensive gloom. Across these six miniatures – each of which concludes with an abrupt cut to silence – Karis mines a vein where sonic experimentation and emotional reflection meet, crafting something uneasy but ultimately celebratory. -Francis Plagne

For fans of Cluster, Actress

BYRON WESTBROOK - What We Mean When We Say Body Language

Hands In The Dark

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