Name: Silent Night (2003) by isan
Duration: 2 min 42 s
Description: We made this especially a live performance for our good friends at Lo/Loaf Recordings for their Christmas party in 2003... it's been tucked away in the basement for the last few years, so we thought we'd dust it off and wish you a peaceful, cosy Christmas.

From the album, 'South Wind,Clear Sky,' out now on Second Language Music.  www.secondlanguagemusic.com

Perhaps still most widely recognised for Dreaming With Alice, his 1972 psych-folk debut for RCA Italy as a 19-year-old art student-troubadour, Mark Fry has been turning his creative gaze on the world, and alchemising its elements into shimmering, quietly visionary works of art, ever since. Certainly not an artist who dances to the music of time in any conventional sense, Mark, a respected, and collected, painter, most often to be found holed up in his Normandy farmhouse studio, allowed more than three decades to glide by before recording Alice’s follow up, 2008’s Shooting The Moon. His subsequent musical activity has been frenetic by comparison.

Mark’s beguiling, Arcadian-flavoured 2011 Second Language album, I Lived In Trees, recorded in collaboration with The A. Lords – musicians from a more recent generation of psychedelic-folk experimenters – proved a major critical hit, demonstrating that Mark Fry’s musical stock lay not only in the Paisley-hued haze of his Aquarian Age youth, but also in the full glare of the postmodern, internet-facilitated present. A series of concerts in Japan and Scandinavia, and a widely reported ‘supergroup’ London showcase, featuring members of Mercury Rev, Super Furry Animals, Tunng and Lemon Jelly, further evinced the subtle but inexorable diffusion of the Mark Fry legend, something abetted by BBC Radio 4’s Today programme airing an interview with Mark in the wake of Trees’ release.

All of which brings us to Mark Fry’s latest, most exquisitely realised musical offering to date, South Wind, Clear Sky. Sung with that now familiar alloy of cool restraint and wondering innocence, and passingly reminiscent of the kind of English pastoralism associated with the likes of Kevin Ayers or Bill Fay, the album’s leanly arranged yet immersive songs are propelled by Mark’s glinting, plangent guitars and deliciously embroidered by John Parker’s double bass, Angèle David-Guillou’s piano and backing vocals and Katie Lang’s French horn, all bound together by producer Guy Fixsen (My Bloody Valentine, Stereolab) into a delightfully iridescent whole. For all its finely honed arrangements, and the translucence of its recording, South Wind, Clear Sky is still very much the work of the man who made Dreaming With Alice; the mature Mark Fry’s feeling for wonderment and magic, for the dreamlike and the innocently surreal, is just as pervasive, and persuasive here, only more focused, and etched against a more luminous, even heavenly canvas.

Where the lyrics on his last album found Mark reaching up through the summer branches toward an azure sky, here that celestial dimension provides the focus for eight shimmering chamber-folk essays whose wistful narratives of flight and fancy and empyrean romance purr and soar with a stately grace, like the ‘Aeroplanes’ of the album’s richly melodic opening track.


Mark Fry - Aeroplanes

One of the pieces I wrote as part of the score to the 2012 documentary film, "Outliers Vol. 1: Iceland".

More info here: www.outliersiceland.com

Choir (Outliers Vol.1)

last night experiment with arp and piano, hope you enjoy!

Converge

We made this especially a live performance for our good friends at Lo/Loaf Recordings for their Christmas party in 2003... it's been tucked away in the basement for the last few years, so we thought we'd dust it off and wish you a peaceful, cosy Christmas.

Silent Night (2003)

Pre-order 'Golden Times 1' on EP/DL here: http://phonofile.link/golden-times-1

Electronic producer Max Cooper and ambient master Tim Hecker rework Ben Lukas Boysen on his new EP 'Golden Times 1' – out on Erased Tapes, June 30th 2017.

Championed by many including BBC Radio DJ Mary Anne Hobbs as the standout track from his most recent album 'Spells', Boysen’s 'Golden Times 1' forms the very heart of his new EP with the same name. Boysen entrusted none other than Max Cooper and Tim Hecker to meticulously shape and lure the title track plus second single 'Nocturne 4' into two entirely separate territories, yet never drifting too far away from their original soundscapes. With 'Evensong' the composer himself contributes a previously unreleased piece. It is yet another example that Boysen is still opening new and unexplored doors in a bid to challenge the existing realm of contemporary music he is very much a part of.

Words from Ben and Max, May 2017:

“Spells was somewhat of a conceptual release for me, so the choice of the remixing artists and where the original material could be taken was very important. Max and Tim, both being role models for me ever since I began listening to their work and who delivered this incredible abstraction, I felt were spot on for this release and were dream candidates to work with. Their ability to re-direct and even re-invent the original material, partially subtle, and with an almost brutish sense of imagination, honors the originals deeply.” — Ben Lukas Boysen

“Ben has been one of my most listened to artists of the past year or so. His last two albums in particular, have meant a lot to me, and provided me with focus when I needed it. So I was excited to have a chance to remix his work. I felt like I couldn't improve on his idea, but what I could do was take what was the core for me, and expand it. It was just a matter of running with the feeling I got from his original, sticking with his melodic forms and original instrumentation, and letting the growing intensity continue along it's established path to the only possible end point of total annihilation in chaos and distortion. My version is almost a continuation of his original if it was allowed to blossom into percussive format, rather than a traditional remix.” — Max Cooper

The golden EP cover art was created by Torsten Posselt at FELD as an extension from the initial album artwork he also created for 'Spells'.

TRACK LISTING

1. Golden Times 1	
2. Evensong 
3. Golden Times 1 (Max Cooper Remix)
4. Nocturne 4 (Tim Hecker Remix)

Ben Lukas Boysen - Nocturne 4 (Tim Hecker Remix)

Susumu Yokota - my energy

From the album Stand Above The Streams by Jason Sharp

Released 23 Feb 2018
180gLP / DL
cstrecords.com/cst130

Composed by Jason Sharp

This music was performed wearing a customized heart monitor providing a single pulse to trigger analogue drums, sine wave patterns, controlled feedback, and synthesizers in real time. All electronic rhythmic material stems from this source.

Jason Sharp: Amplified heart, feedback, synthesizers, bass and baritone saxophones

Adam Basanta: Controlled feedback and amplification systems

Stand Above The Streams

Jason Sharp • "Stand Above The Streams Pt 2A"

Live at Nyabinghi

The Greener Pasture

Peter Oren - "Ones and Ohs"

This year in Barcelona you may have heard some music in between the acts playing at <a href=http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/events/sonar-2013-event>our SonarDôme stage</a>. These distinctive 15+ minute interstitials were produced by two 2011 graduates of the Academy, Scottish-born producer <a href=https://soundcloud.com/claudespeeed>Claude Speeed</a> and Japan’s <a href=https://soundcloud.com/yosi-horikawa>Yosi Horikawa</a>. Commissioned expressly for this purpose, they acted as comedown and come-up for the many acts that came through.

Grab Claude's here: https://soundcloud.com/redbullmusicacademy/claude-speeed-inside-sonar

Yosi Horikawa - Outside (Sónar 2013)

From minimalism to melody and back again, Isan have been navigating the aural Autobahn since a chance meeting brought together Robin Saville and Antony Ryan in 1996. With Robin based in Southend on Sea, England and Antony residing in Denmark, they creatively communicate via email, telephone and postcard. Notes are compared and directions assimilated or abandoned, they prefer to allow their sound to develop on its own.

Having recorded for a variety of micro-indies such as Bad Jazz, Static Caravan and Wurlitzer Jukebox, Saville and Ryan now consider Morr Music their spiritual home.

Continually progressing their passion for sound, Isan are not afraid of giving their analogue tone poems space to breathe, placing as much importance on void and silence as on sounds – sometimes vibrant and scratchy, sometimes hymnal and opulent. Their sonic design sits somewhere between the Düsseldorf sounds of Kraftwerk and neu!, the invention of a young Eno and the smart-pop expertise of the Cocteau Twins.

They’ve remixed and been remixed by the likes of Depeche Mode, The Notwist, Seefeel and Piano Magic amongst others. Isan have also brought their Kosmische confection to the stage, gracing respected festivals such as Sonar and the Big Chill and playing as far afield as China, Japan, Iceland, Russia and Hull*.

*performing to 6 people (including the booker) at the legendary Adelphi.


Silent Night (2003)

isan

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