M. Geddes Gengras - "Ishi" June 24th
180g 12" tip-on _ CD & digital include 40min bonus 'Vigil'
http://www.stonesthrow.com/store/album/mgg/ishi

“No dream, no wildest nightmare, prefigured for Ishi a city crowd, its clamor, its endless hurrying past to be endlessly replaced by others of its kind, face indistinguishable from face.”

- Theodora Kroeber, from Ishi: In Two Worlds


M. Geddes Gengras has inhabited the Los Angeles experimental music scene for the last 7 years, bouncing through various bands, monikers, and a critically acclaimed collaboration with Sun Araw and The Congos. The producer perhaps shines most brightly, however, when left to his own bespoke devices. His solo work is largely based in modular synthesis, comfortably straddling a variety of forms while remaining rooted in a deep affinity for the limitations of analog electronics and a keen ear for timbral manipulation.


Ishi finds the producer diving headlong into beautiful, sprawling ambient explorations and deep, mystical drone. Its title is the name given to “the last wild Indian” in North America, who emerged in 1911 at the age of 49. Hidden all his life in the wilderness of northern California, Ishi spent most of his life completely unexposed to the modern world lurking just beyond his own timeless reality. His only exposure to the “civilized” world came from Gold Rush settlers, whom he watched massacre and disease each and every member of his family and tribe, until he alone remained. When he was found, communication between the miraculous survivor and this strange new world was understandably difficult and frightening— but the knowledge gained through the process proved invaluable.


Sometimes the most effective and direct means of communication and understanding exist outside of human language. Gengras’ highly expressive instrumental record reveals itself via sweeping tonal gestures and striking, intensely colorful washes of heavily processed electronic sound. “Ambient” is insufficient to describe the uniquely evocative soundtrack presented here, a lushly nuanced sound world generated directly from the deeply personal relationship between one man and his meticulously cultivated machines.


“The record is about the schism that exists between the world we live in and those stuck on the margins of it— perpetual outsiders and their quest to understand the torrent of information they are constantly subjected to. I was directly inspired to these pieces by two people in my orbit who died this year, one accidentally and one not, both of whom suffered this affliction and eventually lost their lives to it. The music was a reaction to these losses and a sort of offering of something peaceful but at the same time respectful of the conflict and dissonance of life, with movement always in the distance. I look at it as music for passage between different realms, conscious & un, this world & another, layers of reality... ISHI is a metaphor for that— the man who walks into our world understanding none of it but forced to live in it regardless. This is somewhere in between a prayer and a lullaby for him and for the rest of them, but also something for those of us left behind.” - M. Geddes Gengras

M. Geddes Gengras - Passage

What does Dutch Design Week sound like beyond the human?

Listening and giving attention to non-human entities increases our sensitivity to who is here — and our possible impact on near and far land-communities.

This field recording was made in Eindhoven during Dutch Design Week 2023. It listens to some of the (more vocal) more-than-human entities that comprised the community that week.

•

Who is here? 

Birds are here. The Dommel is here. Possibly no pollinators — too wet, too cold. Sunshine turned up for a little while. Rain was uncommonly present. Sheep, chickens, geese, cosmos, eggplant, amaranth, and rosemary are here. The last summer zucchinis join almost-expired sunflowers.

Salt is here too. It’s in the air and the ground. Fishes from oceans near and far. Wood is here — how far has it travelled? Wool from Rotterdam’s sheep is here. Mycelium is here, conspiring with household waste and hemp to form bio-bricks and living coffins. 

Cadmium and lithium are here. The EVs that chaperone us around, dry and warm out of the wind and the rain, need metals from lands that are not here, but demonstrate the interconnectedness of this land, and theirs, and how the impacts of our needs are never contained to just us, just here, just now. Cadmium is here in other ways too. With zinc, lead and copper, it is bound to the sediment of the Dommel. They’ve been there for more than 200 years, pollution flowing from factories into land and water, affecting worms, grasses, birds, badgers, cows — and people. Human pollution, polluting humans.

Asking who is here quietens the human, so we might design and live in ways that enable multispecies flourishing.

•

Field recording made by Linsey Rendell as part of the Creative Voices residency with Dutch Design Week in 2023. Explore the final project: https://ddw.nl/en/news/879/gardening-towards-the-symbiocene

Photo of a rain-permeable carpark in Strijp-S, where dandelions live too.

Listening to the land-community: Dutch Design Week 2023

Funky Adjacent w/ Latec0mer & Lot Five Two - Aaja Channel 2 - 06 05 24

Ahead of their fabric headline show this Friday 17th May, the Stockholm based studio, trio & label Studio Barnhus share a mix of their notoriously party-starter, eclectic selections.

Tickets: https://ra.co/events/1889721

036 - Studio Barnhus - fabric podcast

My arrangement of Blue Calx, by Aphex Twin, for Violin, Cello, Bass Clarinet and Percussion

03 Blue Calx, Aphex Twin

Burn It

Burn It (feat. KYE)

Physical: Sold Out
Digital: shiningskullstudio.bandcamp.com/album/in-summer
Catalog #: GN35
Barro negro cassette, limited to 100

For nearly two decades, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma has led an ambitious and exploratory trail through a variety of sounds and genres. As a member of longtime underdogs Tarentel, Cantu-Ledesma broadened the horizons, challenged genre constraints, and pushed the boundaries of the entire post rock genre. Later, Jefre established with several experimental bands (the Alps, Portraits, Moholy-Nagy, etc.) and collaborative projects (Raum, with Grouper). But Jefre has also operated a bit behind the scenes, issuing heady sets of experimental music and film through Root Strata, the label he co-runs with Maxwell August Croy.

As a solo artist, Cantu-Ledesma creates deeply emotional sets of drone, noise, tape collage, and field recordings on the likes of Type, Mexican Summer, Digitalis, Students of Decay, and more. 

Jefre now joins Geographic North with In Summer, a cassette that furthers the nostalgia and melancholy portraits of 'A Year with 13 Moons' (2015 Mexican Summer) and 'Songs of Forgiveness' (2014 BARO) for briefer, yet more potent tape loop meditations. 

"Love's Refrain" opens the cassette by plunging into depths of reeling, Cocteau Twins-esque clouds of guitar and patient drum machine. Riddled with static and glorious, hypnotic tape warble, the song perfectly sets the stage for In Summer's emotional arc. "Little Deer Isle" meditates on a series of field recordings and unbelievable calmness.

"In Summer" exists in a rolling simmer of aural infidelity and physical, circumstantial magic. "Blue Nudes (I-IV)" creates a deep and undulating traipse through various vignettes of hope, love, loss, and admiration, while "Prelude" closes things out with a calm, understated but permeating sense of calm optimism.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - "Love's Refrain"

None may be better suited to crafting eulogies than William Basinski. The composer who graced us with the melancholy masterpiece Disintegration Loops now turns his gaze to David Bowie. Today marks the one year anniversary of Bowie's passing and so we humbly premiere Basinski's tribute 'For David Robert Jones.' This hymn for the music hero will be released January 20th on Temporary Residence Ltd. Keep your ears on RBMA Radio because Los Angeles resident Basinski will soon appear as a guest on Frosty's weekly LAndscape program.

@william-basinski
@temporary-residence-ltd-1
rbmaradio.com/shows/landscape
redbullmusicacademy.com

A Shadow In Time 

William Basinski - For David Robert Jones [LAndscape Premiere]

From our first Album released January 1st, 2010

Featruing

Warren Walker-Saxophone/Effects
Gael Petrina-Bass/Effects
Gautier Garrigue-Drums

05 Girl Boy Song (Aphex Twin)

I spend my time researching, imagining, listening, writing, learning, unlearning, and gardening — to design ways of being and becoming that are gentler for people and the planet.

Field recordings and conversations on designing ecologies and economies.

Listening to the land-community: Dutch Design Week 2023

Linsey Rendell

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