Ecker & Meulyzer “Carbon” (SUB033)

Digital & CD: https://eckermeulyzer.bandcamp.com/album/carbon

Koenraad Ecker and Frederik Meulyzer make their Subtext debut with Carbon. 

Based on field recordings made at Norway’s Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a secure seed bank located on the island of Spitsbergen, Carbon grapples with the many contradictions that lie at the heart of our shift into the capitalocene. The project began in 2017, when Ecker and Meulyzer scored the performance “Frozen Songs,” a commission by Zero Visibility Dance Company led by Ina Christel Johannesen.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault was conceived of as an effort to preserve copies of seeds from key crop varieties, ensuring their persistence in the event of large-scale crises. Yet the area is warming faster than anywhere else on earth, causing the permafrost to melt and putting the seed vault at risk. 

Across from the Seed Vault lie the decrepit remnants of Svalbard’s mining activities of the early 20th century; Carbon wrestles with the incongruities nestled in the town’s landscape. Reflecting on dissonances of stasis and change, closeness and distance, enclosure and expanse, as well as cynicism and hope, Ecker and Meulyzer consider the urgency of our situation while trying to sidestep all-too popular depictions of dystopia. In Ecker’s own words, “we don’t have the luxury to afford that kind of pessimism.” 

From close, supple sounds to cold, brutal sonics, Carbon meditates on the many challenging questions and contradictions raised by the Seed Vault and its surroundings—a landscape that embodies and makes visible the many intertwined phenomena that shape our current predicament.

Ecker and Meulyzer, formerly known as Stray Dogs, have released works such as Wasteland, recorded in deconsecrated church in Antwerp, and Kalkar, recorded in the cooling tower of a former power station in Germany. 

Koenraad Ecker works in the fields of electro-acoustic music, field recording, radio plays, stage performance and text. Together with Andrea Taeggi, he is part of the Opal Tapes-affiliated duo Lumisokea. His output encompasses studio albums, audiovisual installations, texts, performances, and sound design for film. 

Frederik Meulyzer is a percussionist active in projects including Belgian jazz band Hamster Axis of the One-Click Panther, contemporary music and theatre company Post uit Hessdalen, and experimental psych-krautrock band Slumberland.

The ecological impact of the production of this record will be compensated through a carbon offsetting program .

Bandcamp

Ecker & Meulyzer - Growth

Forthcoming on Akuphone (AKU1019)
🕐 Digital: October 11
🕙 Vinyl: November 21

Buy: akuphone.com/catalog/KqTlLEqLa6o#content

The prolific Kink Gong (aka Laurent Jeanneau) returns in a unique duet with one of the most prominent artists of the Chinese avantgardist scene Li Daiguo. Kink Gong and Li Daiguo first met in Chengdu (capital of Sichuan Province, China) while playing the same night at the Jahbar music venue. 

A few months later, as they become neighbors in Cai Cun, a village near the old town of Dali (Yunnan), Kink Gong begins recording Daiguo playing Pipa, Cello and Zheng. He then proceeded to deconstruct these recordings while adding voices that he mainly recorded in Yunnan Province. This fantastic combination of field recordings, experimental folk melodies and electronic treatment leads us to a fourth underground universe reminiscent of Jon Hassell's finest hours. 

Credits:
- Pipa, Cello, Zheng performed by LI DAIGUO and recorded by LAURENT JEANNEAU in Cai Cun Dali, Yunnan, China on 11/11/2011
- Voices recorded by LAURENT JEANNEAU in China and Laos 2006-2013. 
- Recomposed by KINK GONG in 2011-2018. 
- Cover: Yi embroidery, Yunnan, China
- Layout by Akuphone
- Mastered by J-P Bameulle

Format:
- Vinyl with download code
- Digital

Kink Gong & Li Daiguo : Dali China - LP Preview (AKU1019)

A Field of Social Tension, taken from the forthcoming album Unabled Form by Li Yilei. Pre-order now at https://www.ltrrecords.com/buy/unabled-form-lp

Unabled Form

A Field of Social Tension

Li Yilei - A Field of Social Tension

SIDE 1
Written, performed and recorded by Emma Grace
Mastered and post-produced by Capitano Merletti at Studio Garp, Venice
Produced by Pipapop Records, Artwork album cover by Giorgia Ragnacci.
Upcoming album date February 26th 2020

6 - Funny Nests

"In Another Place is constructed from the sounds of found materials, domestic objects and self-made mechanisms. Working between Lucerne, Montreal and Huddersfield, we followed simple cues as instructional starting points, responding to a single word to create a sonic response within a specific time-frame. These prompts became starting points for materially engaged, sonic exploration. Each take was a dislocated, improvisation to no-one, confined to our private studios and homes, our headphones and recorders.

Sounds include recordings of ceramic hobs, seaweed, styrofoam, kitchen foil, balloons, resonant tubes, scrap metal, motors, water pumps, spark gaps, lightbulbs, water, wooden dowels and sand paper. The results were layered, re-situated and mixed by matching time-frames and timbre. In Another Place explores the musical potential of everyday materials through disconnection, interpretation and serendipity" - (Tim Shaw)

--

"What if COVID-19 had never swept the globe? What if our lives were operating as normal?

There would’ve been Anne-F Jacques from Montreal as ame’s fourth artist-in-residence collaborating, in different scales, with a gang of sound artists and musicians; Julia Eckhardt, Phil Niblock, Tim Shaw, Tania Caroline Chen, Yorkshire Sound Women Network and myself right now, here at Dai Hall, a venue for underground experimental music and art scene in Huddersfield.

The luxury of chaos (I miss that now) would’ve been followed by high-spirited laugher.

When Keiko invited me to make a mini album for Takuroku, I romanticised this hypothesis, the ‘what-if’ theory. Every event has a cause. This Takuroku opportunity has given us a chance to thrive, to get back to our individual creative zone, to listen to the world once more.

Thanks to Cafe OTO." - (Ryoko Akama)

TR055 - Ryoko Akama, Anne-F Jacques and Tim Shaw - 'heat, heat, gravity'

All new work by London-based artist Robbie Judkins (Left Hand Cuts off the Right), created on keyboard, zither, field recordings, synthesizer, khene, electric guitar and effects. 

"Being classed as a key worker yet not feeling like one is a strange position to be in. Neither working for the NHS, caring for others, being a shop worker, ensuring safe transport nor providing an essential public service; yet remaining at work during this pandemic has filled me with worry, guilt, anxiety and some stability. These compositions and sketches bring together audio documents created during this time with a yearning for quiet despite a fascination with unavoidable noise." - Robbie Judkins

TR063 - Left Hand Cuts off the Right - 'Awareness Of Failure'

Track commissioned for the exhibition ‘Now Accepting Contactless - Design in a Global Pandemic’ V&A Dundee as part of a mix by David Blamey for British Earways to be played on a loop in the gallery.

- - 

A couple of months before lockdown, the housing block where Tom White lives got covered in scaffolding. Residents were left in a building veiled by translucent white netting for months on end. This composition was made in this specific urban lockdown context: the fridge whirs, birds chirp on scaffold poles, electromagnetic activity & tape loops reverberate on the eardrums, within the home and out into the world.

Composed of archive and site specific sounds. 
London Spring 2020

Medina Vibrations (2020)

"Listening is and always has been at the core of The Quiet Club’s (Danny McCarthy & Mick O’Shea) work combined with their policy of not discussing the work before or after its performance this has been the hallmark of their practice. 

Unable to listen to each other perform during the Covid 19 Lockdown the duo resorted to Telepathic Listening. Uninterested in Zoom, Facetime etc. the duo decided to each perform in their own separate studio’s miles apart at a given time on appointed days for twenty minutes. The concept was that then the two recordings would be combined together unedited.

On June 16th 2020 (Bloomsday) the artists inspired by Joyce, performed separately but at the same time and the recordings were then combined together unedited to form Telepathic Lockdown Tape No 7.

There are several other works in the series including one which they both played at 4:33pm as a tribute to John Cage. Telepathic Lockdown Tape No 9."

The Telepathic Lockdown Tapes

TR079 - The Quiet Club - The Telepathic Lockdown Tapes [excerpt]

a quick test of the nlc dp filter (headphones recommended):

a bunch of chopped up noodles from a doepfer system stuck inside a squid salmple, the mix of which is randomly addressed, reduced, and crushed, then sent to the dpf, and plays alongside a main sine noodle from an a-143-9. the diode half of the dpf has a high-ish q setting (which is kinda tame compared to other filters) and a low cut off, and later is modulated by a low rate of digital noise from the a-117 and a sine lfo from a second a-143-9. the transistor side (which has no input and is internally fed by the diode side via photo-couplers) has a maxed out q  and an even lower cut off, and its cv2 is randomly assigned the 2 oscillators section from the a-117 808 source via a switch, which gives it that wild feedback sound. the output of the dpf is monitored from the sum output, and a tiny bit of reverb is added in ableton.

this filter is very  touchy, and depending on how its built, can have a very narrow range on control (as mine does,) and the transistor ladder only really gets fired up if the diode ladder is hot enough (mine uses MCT9001 photo-couplers,) so you can get all these really interesting 'edge of breakup' sounds, to use the dirt-pedal/guitar amp parlance of the day...and its quite nice if you can dial it in, but it does takes some patience.

it also gets *real* bonkers when you start swapping the q path and monitoring different outputs...but i haven't really figured out how to bend any of that to my will yet...

Untitled XV

"Le poids d'ombre"  (2020) __/ A composition by Jürg Frey(CH)
__/
Pierre-Yves Martel (CAN) : viola da gamba
Anouck Genthon (CH) : violin
__/
With Jürg Frey, a now emblematic Swiss composer of the Wandelweiser movement, it is just the shadow of the strings that emerge from the silence, but with a lightness that does not deceive the immense depth of his music. And his piece, which concludes the "distances" serie, wonderfully abolishes the separation between the musicians by its obvious presence touching us.

Anouck Genthon and Pierre-Yves Martel are both talented improvisers, the first alongside Jacques Demierre, the other with Carl-Ludwig Hübsch and Philippe Zoubek, for instance. They give here life to the score with accuracy and to those appearances of sustained notes which sometimes become evocation of melodies that are specific to Jürg Frey's music.
__/
More : insub.org/insub-distances/
HD audio : https://insub.bandcamp.com/album/j-rg-frey-le-poids-dombre-insub-distances-8-8
Video : youtu.be/62G85SJg8uI
Interview about the piece : youtu.be/tbKFDvVKqvA 
__/
Insub.distances - a project by Insub.asso & Insub.records - 2020
__/
Supported by : Prohelvetia ("Close distance" programm) / Fondation Suisa / Fondation Nicati-De Luze

Jürg FREY "Le poids d'ombre" __/ Pierre-Yves Martel & Anouck Genthon [insub.distances 8/8]

TR115 - Maria Chavez & Jordi Wheeler - 'Five Thousand'

INSUB. is a label, a netlabel and a concert organisation based in Geneva, CH.
It covers the fields of experimental, electroacoustic, improvised & composed musics.
The Records section, started in 2013, has the from of Pay Per Download only releases, accompanied by a physical print containing textes, scores, etc, thought has an echo, or a reminder, of the digitalised music.
The netlabel offers free download for every releases, but some are however available in classical physical format (cd, cdr, LP).
The concerts happens here and there in Geneva, and the Insub Meta Orchestra is a very large ensemble.
These activities has been develloped since 2006, formely under the « Insubordinations » label.

Jürg FREY "Le poids d'ombre" __/ Pierre-Yves Martel & Anouck Genthon [insub.distances 8/8]

INSUB. records

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