sounds

Featuring contributors from Australia and around the world, ‘The Ear is a Brain: Compendium LP’ is a limited edition vinyl record in parallel with, and celebration of, Liquid Architecture’s 2014 festival.

http://www.liquidarchitecture.org.au/the-ear-is-a-brain-lp/
http://www.liquidarchitecture.org.au/program/the-ear-is-a-brain/

‘The Ear is a Brain’ will contain, inscribed in its grooves, a series of vibrational (made of sound) and conceptual (addressing sound) experiments. ‘The Ear is a Brain’ is an artist’s record. It is not the documentation of a work of art or sound. The record is the work of art. We take inspiration from the history of ‘sound art’ anthologies, notably Audio Arts.

LIQUID ARCHITECTURE is an Australian organisation for artists working with sound. LA investigates the sounds themselves, but also the ideas communicated about, and the meaning of, sound and listening.

The Ear Is A Brain

The story of the project
Featuring contributors from Australia and around the world, ‘The Ear is a Brain: Compendium LP’ is a limited edition vinyl record in parallel with, and celebration of, Liquid Architecture’s 2014 festival.

‘The Ear is a Brain’ will contain, inscribed in its grooves, a series of vibrational (made of sound) and conceptual (addressing sound) experiments. ‘The Ear is a Brain’ is an artist’s record. It is not the documentation of a work of art or sound. The record is the work of art. We take inspiration from the history of ‘sound art’ anthologies, notably Audio Arts.

Christof Migone (Canada), Alessandro Bosetti (Italy), Helen Grogan (Australia), Johannes Kreidler (Germany), Robin Fox (Australia), Emile Zile (Australia), Salomé Voegelin (Switzerland) and David Mollin (UK), Andrew Brooks and Sam Pettigrew (Australia), John Nixon / The Donkey's Tail (Australia), Makiko Yamamoto (Japan), IDM Theft Able (USA), New Waver (Australia), Eric Demetriou (Australia), Sweat Tongue (Netherlands), The Charles Ives Singers (Australia) and Christopher LG Hill (Australia).

http://www.liquidarchitecture.org.au/the-ear-is-a-brain-lp/
http://www.liquidarchitecture.org.au/program/the-ear-is-a-brain/

LIQUID ARCHITECTURE is an Australian organisation for artists working with sound. LA investigates the sounds themselves, but also the ideas communicated about, and the meaning of, sound and listening.

Johannes Kreidler - Inhalation Samples (The Ear is a Brain LP, Liquid Architecture)

Charles Ives Singers - The Improv Rover (The Ear is a Brain LP, Liquid Architecture)

I'd M Thfft Able - Don't Step On My Teen Heart (The Ear is a Brain LP, Liquid Architecture)

The Donkey's Tail With Jessica Aszodi - Two Circles With Chairs (The Ear is a Brain LP, LA)

Robin Fox - SonaChromaSketch (The Ear is a Brain LP, Liquid Architecture)

Makiko Yamamoto - I Am Dead (The Ear is a Brain LP, Liquid Architecture)

Zurich includes Tony Wilson (Knives ov Resistance), Neil Halstead (Slowdive/Mojave 3), 
& Sarah Peacock (Seefeel). All of the recordings were lost until very recently when Touch recording artist Mark Van Hoen found the two tracks on old CD-Rs and cassettes he was given by Wilson. This CD version of the original LP release includes bonus tracks.

Zurich began as a 1994 musical partnership between Neil Halstead then of Slowdive and  Tony F Wilson. The two recorded a handful of tracks together at a time when Wilson was  co-promoting and DJing at the club/live night Quirky in South London where he booked acts  including Pan Sonic, Hafler Trio and Autechre. Halstead was shortly to begin work on Slowdive’s  final and most experimental album Pygmalion. Recorded at a time when the popularity of ambient  techno was at its peak, these recordings are remarkably austere by comparison. Whilst A Harsh 
Truth displays the Oriental gracefulness of a Sakamoto/Sylvian collaboration, Tzarist’s gothic 
industrialism shares more in common with the early works of Coil. Following the release of  Pygmalion and Creation letting go of Slowdive, Halstead would disband Slowdive and abandon  sound experimentation to create more song-based material in Mojave 3.  Shortly thereafter,  Wilson began collaborating with drum & bass producer and engineer Joe Gray on more rhythm  based, yet still atmospheric productions. Too Scared to Breath features the voice of Seefeel’s  Sarah Peacock and sounds not unlike prime Autechre and Aphex. Militia (Dynamic Warfare) on 
the other hand mirrors the post-metal Dub of Techno Animal and Scorn.

ZURICH Too Scared To Breathe from ZURICH CD featuring members of Slowdive, Seefeel

Five

This is the third collaborative release by Steven Wilson (Bass Communion) and Frans de Waard (Freiband), following two well-received 3"CD releases, both on De Waard's My Own Little Label.  Early in 2014 Frans extended an invitation to Steven to take part in his Brombron project, where one artist works in residence with another musician for one week, on music to be performed in concert at the end of that week.  That other musician turned out to be Thomas Köner, the date December 2014, the location Extrapool, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. In the middle of this residency there happened to be a day off when Thomas needed to be out of town. Rather than waste the day, Steven and Frans decided on an impromptu concert performance, and spent the day preparing the music. The concert took place that evening in the relaxed environment of Extrapool for a small audience of invited friends. This record contains a slightly reworked recording of the performance on a 12” vinyl with a total playing time of 26 minutes. No additional overdubs were made, but parts of the music on the second side were subsequently layered and recycled in the studio.  On side 1 'Courage’ is in the tradition of ambient musique concrete, and continues the style and approach of the previous Bass Communion / Freiband releases.  But on side 2  'Cowardice’ shatters expectations with a slab of psychedelic noise assault, complete with exploding rhythm machines and gnarled electric guitar.

Strictly limited to 500 copies on vinyl in a beautiful Carl Glover designed sleeve.

Bass Communion / Freiband - collaborative LP - Aug 2015

produced by David Rothenberg
artwork and visualization by Michael Deal

What record album was so important that ten million copies of it needed to be pressed at once? You guessed it. Songs of the Humpback Whale. In 1979 National Geographic Magazine inserted a flexible "sound page" inside the back cover of all of its editions in twenty-five languages, and that is supposedly how many they printed. No human pop star has ever received such magnanimous treatment, so what is it that is so special about the songs of the humpback whale?

Well, for one, humans knew nothing of this fabulous sound until the US Navy released its classified recordings at the end of the 1960s, at the very moment the world was most poised to listen to the unknown, the psychedelic, and the trippiest of sounds. Humpback whale song fit the bill perfectly. From high wails to deep growls to rhythmic scratches to tearful moans, it encompasses the full range of emotions in the longest song performed by any animal, a tune that can go on for nearly twenty-four hours at a time. People are often moved to tears when they hear such intensity for the first time. Some cannot believe it could ever come from a place as silent as the sea. This song inspired the global movement to Save the Whales which continues unto this day.

People tend to assume humpback whale song just a "whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaooooh" and leave it at that. But if you sit down and listen to a complete humpback performance you will find that the long moan is only one note in a complex composition, with distinct phrases, repetition, structure, organization, shape and form akin to many kinds of human music. This is no random outburst of cries and whispers, but a song with power, verve, identity, and design.

It is a desire to go beyond memory and into the sounds of reality that has led us to release New Songs of the Humpback Whale, which aims to gather the best recent recordings of scientists and whale listeners the globe over to give all of us a chance to assess what has happened to whale song over the past few decades. One can hear gradual changes in humpback song from year to year, with some phrases lengthening, others shortening, others disappearing altogether as new variations appear. The change can be heard month to month, and even week to week within a single season. Today's whale songs should sound quite different from what he fondly remembers from the sixties. But is their musical culture going downhill? Or is it on the rise? Or just changing? Can we humans even tell the difference?

To tell the difference Michael Deal, designer of the Pinterest logo and a veteran of Google and Splice, has created a new way to visualize humpback whale song, based on sonograms familiar to sound scientist but simplified into colorful glyphs making the structure of this grand underwater music easier to understand than ever before.

Though humpback whale song did not evolve for humans to appreciate, it may be no accident that we do. Upon hearing the great song for the first time, whale scientist Roger Payne said he heard the size of the ocean, "as if I had walked into a dark cave to hear wave after wave of echoes cascading back from the darkness beyond.... That's what whales do, give the ocean its voice."


Humpback Whale in Madagascar from New Sounds of the Humpback Whale CD

Composed by Daniel Lea as L A N D, ANOXIA was mixed by Ben Frost and mastered/cut by Rashad Becker.

Bringing to mind the work of modernist architects such as R.M Schindler and Erno Goldfinger, as much as the paradoxical universes of Ballard where dream and reality fuse, allowing chaos and order to logically cohabit, L A N D’s second record transports to a world at once stark and depopulated and yet teeming with a visceral lushness of a near future we can all recognize.

L A N D Metamorphosis from Anoxia CD/LP - Available Now

Liquid Architecture, operating since 2002, is a community-founded, artist-first organisation that exists to explore sonic relationships and practices on the radical edges of sound and listening.