Dfrrm

By now counting more than four decades of constant activity, Pierre Bastien erected such a towering and influential body of work that any blurb attempt regarding his music could easily fall into redundancy. Not that his revolving soundworld, deeply personal and unique, has ever stalled into gimmick or self mimicry, being Bastien the tireless explorer whose vision can never be complete, only continuously redefined in a process of discovery equally playful and challenging. So, completely in touch with Discrepant’s ethos.

Returning to the label after 2017 The Mecanocentric Worlds of Pierre Bastien, the french musician, composer and instrument builder, brings an array of instruments from different cartographies and legacies with the appropriately titled Sonic Folkways. Resorting to different types of horns, prepared trumpet, an army of percussion, from gongs and tambourine to castanets and maracas, violin and too many others to mention here, Bastien weaves together a highly textured and hypnotic mosaic that projects an exotica beamed from scraps of the future. ‘Aha!’ in the same interstellar wavelength as Sun Ra’s cosmic tones, ‘Moor’s Room’s almost orchestral tapestry of small percussion and insects or the non-western strings and tunings salvaged from ancient alien ceremonies on ‘Pan’s Nap’.

In an era where so much ink has been shed about world building in experimental music, Bastien can actually claim that to himself. The otherworld is right here, indeed.

Artwork collage by Evan Crankshaw
Mastered by Anne Taegert @ D&M

More info at https://www.discrepant.net/product/pierre-bastien-sonic-folkways/

Sonic Folkways

Pierre Bastien - Aha! (from Sonic Folkways)

hyperstitions

Our new sister label is launched soon! Dub 7"s only!!! Limited, tasty, righteous.

Tilliander - Expect Resistance (Dub On Arrival DOA01 7")

Composed for Wave Field Synthesis at Game of Life, Den Haag, NL, primarily with non-standard synthesis processes.

Textonics

maneuver among the fire

electronics:  ananko
drums: yerofeev

april 2018

@ https://soundcloud.com/karlfousek

Established as a key voice in modern synthesizer music, Karl Fousek’s focus lies on the sense of movement inherent in his modular. And it is indeed ‘movement’, along with its close cousin ‘time’, that seems to inform the pure experimentalism with sound generated on Another Use For Time. Fousek’s tones flurry back and forth across and inside each other, with the Canadian composer oscillating between the macro and micro gestures of his instrument to create a sonic sculpture in constant motion. Fousek himself describes it as an album made in transition: “It's kind of a reflection of my past work and taste and techniques, while also trying to move forward.” 

Unusually for Fousek, these three pieces were recorded at separate times, straddling a period of transition as the artist left Montreal to move back west to Vancouver. 

The album’s opening 18-minute exploration, ‘What Was Once Or Twice’, was recorded in Seattle, and is split into two movements. The first sees Fousek introduce a variety of whooshes, bleeps, and frozen tones, and the second sends them spiralling out of control, and receding back into the outer reaches of his setup, short circuiting and colliding into mind bending new forms that seem to fold space-time. The entire piece is built around a custom software delay network that “reacts automatically and changes itself based on the incoming signal”. 

The brief interlude at the centre of the record – ‘Circling’ – dates further back to 2016 and deploys those embryonic delay techniques Fousek would later develop, while the second two-parter dates to Montreal in 2018. Constructed from noisier jams, “Time For Another User” is dense with ideas; an attempt to make a “classic” electroacoustic composition devoid of narrative and structure. Algorithms and spontaneity are deployed to encourage maximum disruption, making it a sonic smorgasbord that rewards close listens. Every modest, Fousek views it differently. “Hopefully,” he says, “it just floats by.” 

credits
releases May 1, 2020 

What Was Once Or Twice recorded 2019 at The Chapel, Seattle. Circling recorded 2016, Montreal. 

Time For Another User recorded 2017-18, Montreal; Philippe Vandal contributed additional synthesizer. 

All tracks compiled, edited and mixed 2020 at Deep Blue, Vancouver. 

Mastered by Josh Stevenson at Otic Sound. 

Artwork by Maurizio Vicerè from the HOLOGRAMS series. 
www.akavice.com

Another Use For Time

_ph002 Karl Fousek - What Was Once Or Twice Part 1

Insect and fluid electronics on the second EP from Melbourne’s Third Space. Six IDM-tinged forceful grooves, straddling the intersection of smoke-choked nightclubs and homebound speaker stacks.

‘Zones 1 Through To 4’: Chaotic modular workouts and uneasy time signatures meet drum ‘n bass. Swirling and hypnotic, catch your breath.

‘Six at 148’: Peak-time, neon-haze confusion with an oozing bassline. Third Space finds the perfect kick and adds four more.

Resonant experimentation, ringing ears and broken steel – uniquely honest, deliberate and effective.

Mastered by Joseph Buchan
Album Artwork by Hector Clark, Image Direction by Phoebe Pendergast
Oblique EP synopsis by Henry Rowe

Special thanks to HJR and EH

Stochastic Percussive Workout Part 1

Ned Lagin's Seastones is a pioneering electronic composition interweaving metaphors from nature, science, art and music and the origins of music. Reflecting the technology, science, modern art, new ecological awareness and optimism of the times and culture, Seastones embodies the history of electronic music by taking full advantage of tape music, analog synthesizers and computer technology to create pieces that are dynamic, rich and deep.

Originally released by the Grateful Dead's Round Records in 1975, Seastones' reputation as a gem of electronic music was further enhanced by the celebrity of the musicians who contributed to the source material. Seastones musicians include Ned Lagin (processed piano, clavichord, organ, prepared piano, electric piano, synthesizers), Jerry Garcia (processed electric guitar, pedal steel guitar, voice), Phil Lesh (processed electric bass), David Crosby processed electric guitar and vocals), Grace Slick and David Freiberg (processed vocals), and Mickey Hart and Spencer Dryden (percussion).

This new LP presents two crafted Seastones sets (Sets 4 and 5, 18 tracks) drawn from the entire Seastones composition and contains gorgeous extended processed vocals by Garcia, Crosby, Slick and Freiberg, and beautiful abstract instrumental passages by Lagin and all.

hyperstitions

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