Messiaen on a reasonably Western harmonic scale/tonerow!

Reflections unfold in a landscape of shifting mirrors, where water sparkles, silence breathes, and memories float like smoke. Each track is a passage between shadow and starlight, tracing hidden patterns in time until they dissolve into trails of light that never fade.

The Weight of Quiet Stars

Reuploading my full length "STRANGE FRONTIERS" in celebration and preparation of its LP vinyl release. Artwork by Shelby Kistler.

"Completely improvised and live, "Strange Frontiers" is the project from Austin Davis of Wolf Party that builds cinematic NeoWestern Soundscapes using acoustic guitar. The unique sound of this release comes from the serendipity of recording and manipulating an instrument with such organic tones like the acoustic guitar, live, with almost no post-production, maintaining the organic quality of the sound as well as the highly textural and subtle nuance of using a guitar in such an unusual way. This is dark ambient super psychedelic guitar music that will chill you out to say the very least, and inspire and move you inside at its very best. Visual, cinematic, and strange: this is one esoteric oddity you want to give a real listening chance. If you allow it to unfold to you in its own time, I promise auditory rewards! Audiophiles will love it! Inspired by the deserts and hill country of Texas, esoterica, and psychedelia, Strange Frontiers aims to dazzle, captivate, and evoke that kind of imagery as it guides you through a unique, textural, and nuanced sound experience like you haven't had before, while delivering some serious Southwestern vibes."

The Limited edition cassette is available only from Foreign Object Damage or from me directly, as I have only a few artist copes left.

Includes unlimited streaming of Strange Frontiers via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Download available in 16-bit/44.1kHz.

Buy/Stream

Austin Davis - Strange Frontiers - 04 Strange Frontiers 004

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)

Ultrafog - Faces, Forgotten

Side A.
1. Coming through the haze
2. Iris
3. Place for a willow
Side B.
1. Beacon
2. Cathedrals were transparent

Available on December 21 2016
CS with DL code
JPY 1,000
https://solitudesolutions.bandcamp.com/merch/kdk-11-ultrafog-faces-forgotten

KDK-11 Solitude Solutions 2016

Ultrafog -  Iris

ulla - table

Suzanne Ciani
Fish Music
FKSP011 (Finders Keepers Records)
7" | MP3

As the first and only dedicated label to liberate the private, non-commercial artefacts from Suzanne Ciani’s groundbreaking Ciani Musica studio vault, Finders Keepers Records presents an incredible cryogenically suspended slice of precious precocious immersive fledgling synthesis for this ultra limited RSD 2107 title.Ironically well removed from the intension of phonographic application in its original inception, this anti-pop wash of marine biology modular synth sound design was originally proposed by a very young Ciani for exclusive infinite loop airings in a giant mid-American shopping mall aquarium in 1977.
Potentially conjuring ambient scenes from the consumerist satirical Dawn Of The Dead while sonically ushering a genuine desire for total musical science reevaluation/revolution via a decidedly mainstream portal, the Fish Music project is a striking eerie example of how Ciani’s “Subversion With A Smile” approach led to a long career breaking boundaries in formal music technology, film scoring, the advertising industry and gender equality – all of which has continued to fuel her passion and channel her life lust and artistic appetite much to the benefit of future ambitious trajectories of music.
Owing much to the memory of genuine synthesiser maverick Don Buchla this conceptual release is very much the product of artistic America at its progressive halcyon but, with its illustrious and idiosyncratic composition, communicates subtle undertones of Suzanne’s feminine Italian origins which seldom reside outside of the efforts of Roman library composers like Casa, Tomassi, Raskovich and siblings Antonioni and Maria Teresa Luciani. Presented here as an isolated one-sided pressing on aquatic clear vinyl and including the original press release and a press cutting this limited release proceeds a wider series of unreleased Ciani work for 2017. File under… water.

A RECORD STORE DAY 2017 EXCLUSIVE

www.finderskeepersrecords.com
https://finderskeepersrecords.bandcamp.com/album/fish-music

Fish Music

Suzanne Ciani - Fish Music

Title track from the new LP, 'Insignia', out in Japan-only on cassette for Ryo Murakami's Depth Of Decay label.

https://depthofdecay.bandcamp.com/album/insignia

Insignia

https://sequel-label.bandcamp.com/album/append
@ullastraus

[SQ016] Ulla Straus - "Air"

Artist: ASUNA & Jan Jelinek
Album: Signals Bulletin
Label#: Faitiche18
 
Faitiche is delighted to announce the release of a new collaboration between the Japanese sound artist ASUNA and Jan Jelinek: the album Signals Bulletin brings together joint improvisations and compositions made over a period of three years in Berlin, Kyoto and Kanazawa. ASUNA’s meandering organ drones merge with Jelinek’s pulsating synthesizer and field recording loops to create dense superclusters that span broad harmonic arcs.

-

Watching the Japanese sound artist ASUNA playing the organ, some people might be surprised. ASUNA is no virtuoso flying over the keyboard in a rage. Instead, with the calm gestures of an office worker, he cuts strips of adhesive tape to the correct length before sticking them onto the keys of his instrument. In this way, large clusters of keys are held down, creating a dense and sustained range of frequencies, while the sound artist continually prepares further sets of keys or removes tape again. I have rarely seen a more convincing performance concept, with such a power to fascinate.

I first met ASUNA when we both gave a concert at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, his home city. He performed the organ drones as described above and I immediately knew I wanted to collaborate with him. Six years and five meetings later, we completed Signals Bulletin. The album includes both joint improvisations and compositions, recorded in Berlin, Kanazawa and Kyoto.

Whether using prepared organ, Casio keyboards or mechanical plastic toys, ASUNA creates rich textures of sound that barely change over long stretches of time. It is a music without breaks. For a while, I was unsure how my loops made using modular synthesizers and live sampling fitted here – until I realized the role I had to take in this duet: I would provide the rhythmically pulsating foundation over which his dense continuums could unfold.

The result is harmonically drifting superclusters that put us into a meditation-like state. It can perhaps be compared to Automatic Writing – a mode of creative expression floating somewhere between concentration and distraction. Both the structure of our pieces and our approach to our instruments allow a similar “absence”: we let the machines play and repeat themselves – while we, in a mild form of trance, adopt the role of observers, intervening only occasionally.

It is no coincidence that ASUNA owns a collection of Doodle Art – drawings jotted down during conversations or while talking on the phone. It is said that works made like this point to the unconscious and reveal pet motifs – because a doodler always inadvertently returns to his or her favourite themes. The artwork for Signals Bulletin features pictures from the collection, in this case sheets of paper from the pads provided in stationery shops to test out pens. The special quality of such doodles is that the jumble of drawings is the work of a collective whose individual members do not know each other. Layer by layer is added, by someone different each time – until it becomes a dense cluster of lines and symbols ...
Jan Jelinek, Berlin 2018

ASUNA & Jan Jelinek: Relief, Pt.1

Taken from th album 'Ecstatic Computation' releasedas LP and Download

Ecstatic Computation

Caterina Barbieri 'Fantas' (EMEGO 259)

The Sacrificial Code

Kali Malone - Litanic Cloth Wrung (from "The Sacrificial Code" iDEAL 2xLP/3xCD)

Electronic Sound Disturbances & Pleasures since 1998.

Contact: labelhead_at_idealrecordings.com

Kali Malone - Litanic Cloth Wrung (from "The Sacrificial Code" iDEAL 2xLP/3xCD)

iDEAL Recordings

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