Taken from 'Fringe' LP/Download (E064, Ecstatic 03/09/2021)

A gorgeous swell of intimate soundscaping from Felisha Ledesma on this simmering stunner for Ecstatic, despatching two extended, richly absorbing pieces weft from everyday detritius; synths, strings, voicemail, found sounds - hitting a similar spot for us as Ulla’s diaristic 'inside means inside me’ but with a more defined play of sound-as-light that gently and memorably tugs at the earlobes and heartstrings. 

Exploring a music of presence and ultra subtle inference, ‘Fringe’ is the 2nd release by Ledesma, student of Berlin's estimable Universität der Künste, following from a debut for Enmossed x Psychic Liberation earlier this year. Using AMQR - a software synthesiser built by Ledesma together with Ess Mattisson - both pieces here shimmer with elusive timbres that occupy a realm that feels lost between worlds - neither electronic nor acoustic, but more a sort of observational sound that radiates togetherness and warmth. 

Operating at insightful levels of synaesthesia, Ledesma poetically turns ostensibly humdrum sources into clouds of smoke - emails, voicenotes, walking along the water, a poem attached to an email, walking alone in New York during lockdown, going for a swim at sunset in the desert - all turn into a smudge of memory. When ‘Beamsplitters’ opens with a tangible human presence - a voicemail from a friend - it startles with its earthly pull, eventually getting lost in a tangled spool of found sound leaving just a trace of iridescent, intimate reverie. 

On ‘Golden Mirror’ Felisha gently diffracts a lonesome guitar phrase into a humming thizz with a steeply uncanny ability to jog the memory in a similar way to how olfactory stimulus can conjure feelings of nostalgia. It’s a trick familiar from an emergent new realm of lower case composers creating something like submerged, small scale symphonies that work counter to notions of classical excess or anodyne ambient, instead focusing on microcosmic, highly peronalised sort of worldbuilding that’s impenetrable, yet somehow entirely open.

Felisha Ledesma - Golden Mirror [E064]

A track from Ignatz & De Stervende Honden's 'Saturday's Den' LP

IGNATZ & DE STERVENDE HONDEN - You Can't See Me

My new single Funky Time ! 
Please follow me on my YT channel if you like it !
YouTube :
www.youtube.com/@Kaouflow

Funky Time

Poetry, speech, melody and electronics combine on this limited tape from new sub-label ‘Purely Physical Teeny Tapes’.

A change of pace for PP, ‘Figures’ is also a divergence for the two artists involved. Emerging from Melbourne, 'Figures' is a rare artefact for devotees of both poetry and electronic music. The release marks a protean coming together by two figures with curiosity for each other's practice, forming a union between sound and speech to explore themes of bodies, time, language and power.

Lucy Van, who works as a post-doctoral researcher in English and Theatre studies, offers her poems in spoken form and also transcribed in full for the poster in the release.

Laila Sakini, a DJ who has recently emerged as a songwriter-producer, shapes music around each poem intuitively, adding context with restraint, in an experimental, yet pop-conscious process.

Initially developed as a one track hobby project for a noise and spoken word poetry night (which was cancelled), 'Figures' continued to evolve into a more complete body of work, with Laila leaking the demos on her NTS guest slots, leading to this eventual, finalisation of an EP.

The release is presented on a pro-dubbed all clear tape, packaged with an A2 double sided fold-out newsprint poster, all housed within a PVC heat sealed pouch.

Out June 2nd, 2017.

Mastered by Rashad Becker.

Edition of 100.

Laila and Lucy:

Lucy writes about poetry and photography. She is a post-doctoral researcher in the English and Theatre Studies program at the University of Melbourne, and an editor at Cordite Poetry Review. Lucy also writes lyric and prose poems, and has spoken at venues including The Slow Canoe, Station Gallery, and the National Gallery of Victoria.

Laila's role as a DJ and emerging producer/songwriter has seen her traverse between her home town of Melbourne and London. She has performed across clubs and festivals in  Melbourne and in various venues throughout London, Paris and Belgium along with art spaces including The National Gallery of Victoria, Carriageworks and The Australian Centre for the Moving Image. She presents semi-regularly on NTS Radio, has appeared on Boiler Room and has opened for the likes of Dopplereffekt and Optimo. Laila has recently begun producing, writing and performing live solo and collaborative works.

Laila Sakini & Lucy Van - False Ceiling

Joe McPhee: B-flat and E-flat alto clarinet, Roland MC202 Micro Composer synthesizer
 
Bryan Eubanks: Open-circuit electronics (sinetones)
 
 
 
What constitutes an unidentified sighting, the rarely heard ‘alien’ clarinet playing of Joe McPhee and the ineffable electronics of Bryan Eubanks? Penultimate Press is extremely proud to produce My Undocumented Alien Clarinet: a strange sensual addition to the ever inquisitive McPhee canon. My Undocumented Alien Clarinet is a beguiling document of a performance held at Alternative Books, Kingston, NY, Sunday, August 6, 2006 under the auspices of the Pauline Oliveros Foundation’s New Vanguard Series. My Undocumented Alien Clarinet captures a unique intimate improvisation exploring the outer reaches of the form. 
 
Joe McPhee, (b.1939 USA) is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, improviser, conceptualist and theoretician. He has collaborated with Pauline Oliveros, Graham Lambkin, Peter Brotzmann, Evan Parker, Raymond Boni among many others. With a career spanning nearly 50 years and over 100 recordings, he continues to tour internationally, forge new connections and reach for music’s outer limits.
 
.. His magical take on avant-garde sax remains one of the wonders of the scene. He still has one of the most beautiful tones on the planet, even when he’s reaching for jazz’s outer limits." - Time Out NY
 
Bryan Eubanks (b. 1977, USA) is a musician composing electronic and acoustic works for small ensembles, solo instruments, and custom generative software; improvising in collaboration; and working with acoustic holography, a stereophonic recording and diffusion technique.
 
Artwork by Jerry Starpoli
Liner notes by Joe McPhee 
In memory of Jerry Starpoli 
 
http://www.penultimatepress.com

Joe McPhee and Bryan Eubanks - My Undocumented Alien Clarinet (excerpt)

https://sequel-label.bandcamp.com/album/append
@ullastraus

[SQ016] Ulla Straus - "Air"

Track 1 from Lea Bertucci 'Metal Aether' [NNA108]
Available February 9th, 2018 on Vinyl, CD & Digital formats.
Order: http://nnatapes.com/available-releases/lea-bertucci-metal-aether

Metal Aether

Lea Bertucci "Patterns For Alto"

B1 on 'Envelope' , Ekster 2018

order: https://eksterlabel.bandcamp.com/album/envelope

Heraldic Snippets

The sound on this release has been examined and produced throughout March and April 2019 in Frankfurt am Main during a music-residency initiated and hosted by "Künstlerhaus Mousonturm" and MMODEMM.

Written and Produced by Asuna Arashi

Asuna - Cloud River Seen From The Window

Pre-order available now. Color copies exclusively available for Important Records mailorder customers. 

Multivocal is a polyphonic maze that unfolds to both the body and the mind. A generative take on rhythm and spacial perception, it presents the same events in different configurations. 

The two pieces of the album, "Solid of Revolution" and "Never Odd or Even", mirror each other with the same principle in different musical scales: steady pulses with one millisecond difference in tempo start beating together, then slowly phase organically and progress into ever-changing rhythmic patterns until they finally return to unison. 

Multivocal emphasizes shifts of attention in the listener’s experience and plays with the expectations that frame it. Originally conceived for quadraphonic sound, the pieces reveal the many different aspects and modes of perception that can arise within the same sequence of notes. In this way Multivocal is influenced by concepts of gestalt psychology such as multistable perception - a term describing ambiguous patterns that offer multiple interpretations at once. The minimalism and repetitive quality of the music also refers to trance-inducing and collective music practices, driven by the strong bodily affects induced through the use of rhythms.

Those two compositions were recorded live during Ars Electronica 2018 at the occasion of the sleeping event « Sonatas for Sleep/less », curated by multimedia artist Shu Lea Cheang and cultural theorist Matthew Fuller.

Jessica Ekomane - Multivocal - LP - PRE-ORDER

Félicia Atkinson
Everything Evaporate
SP121
Shelter Press

Out April 3rd, 2020

—

Everything Evaporate

There is that instance, when you are passing over a threshold, where the before and after fall away and it is only the threshold itself that you are existing within - that neutral space of the in-between, of the transition, that becomes the actual lived-in moment. It is through fully occupying and being present in that transitional space that we are able to access new perspectives that allow for a reassessment of things previously thought understood. The five tracks that make up Everything Evaporate feel like a sustained moment of focus during a period of transition; a longer breath taken in that actual lived-in moment.

You find in the paintings of Helen Frankenthaler, when two colors meet, a bleed that washes out the boarder; a porousness that feels like a fleeting but significant transitory event. The idea of a “crossing” comes to mind - the willingness to extend oneself from one place out towards another. For Atkinson this willingness manifests through language and through the inventing of new stories as a method of reaching across and creating the possibilities for connection.

Spectral drones, gongs, bells, pianos and marimbas accompany Atkinson’s voice, but now we also find laconic pitch-shifted conversationalists and digitally harmonized chanteuses joining in. As mesmerizing as the narrators voice is at the center of these tracks, it is the addition of other voices that produces the heteroglossic complexities. These are the voices that most often morph into pure sonic materiality; they exist just under the surface of the music creating texture and rhythm while occasionally pushing their way into the foreground with abstracted extrapolations. And it is through the summing of these many voices that a fractal image emerges, at once both singular and plural.

Everything Evaporate was produced after a year of travel and shows. It is, in a sense, a reassessed document of public performance with improvised studio interventions acting to break the linear stream of the live-on-stage temporality. There is a resonance between these in-studio improvisations of Atkinson’s and Frankenthaler’s paint pores: Before executing the performative action materials are considers, processes are devised and then, with fluid gesture, the event happens. In Everything Evaporate it is through a trust in materials, process and gesture that new melodies and language become available and new narratives pool and find form.

There are many moments within these piece that hint at the sensation of falling asleep while reading a novel - the stories, images and characters follow you into your unconscious but also wait for you on the page; you walk a liminal edge and wander that threshold of consciousness where the book and your imagination become intertwined. As this threshold is crossed your understanding of what has been given to you and what you have created for yourself is obscured, a new space opens up and new stories are revealed.

- words by Ben Vida.

Everything Evaporate

Félicia Atkinson 'Everything Evaporate' (SP121)

( ͡⊙ ͜ʖ ͡⊙)

contact: Milanwarmoeskerken@gmail.com



----------------past-------------------------------
18/07 Sonar Festival, Barcelona, Spain
26/07 Supervue, Liege
02/08 De Nor, Antwerp 
16/08 Pukkelpop, Hasselt

Heraldic Snippets

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