Woodwinds

Xantippe's Rebuke was written for Libby Van Cleve. It is for eight taped oboes and one live, solo oboe. The eight taped parts are equal and dependent, while the solo part is meant to be a solo with the tape as accompaniment. The piece works very carefully with the unique sound of the oboe. (The partials of the oboe are so strong that I had to stop using headphones while I worked on the piece.) The taped oboes are written to exploit the harmonic properties of the oboe's sound, combining to create combination and interference tones. I started with unison pitches that created the richest sound and built the piece from there. Most of the subsequent pitches and phrases that I wrote occurred naturally before I notated them later on in the piece, and these in turn created others. So, in effect, the nature of the oboe and its natural sound determined the direction of the piece. The solo part starts off by playing notes that are being created, but not notated, on the tape, continuing on to play a melody that “floats” above the taped oboes. Xantippe was the wife of Socrates.

Xantippe's Rebuke

Feu de Joie was written for bassoonist Shannon Peet and is an homage to the bassoon and its wonderful sound. I had always wanted to write for bassoon, but since my primary interest in writing is to hear what happens when notes are combined, I didn’t want to write a solo piece for just one line of music, so I wrote Feu de Joie for six taped bassoons and one live bassoon (the concert format). The six taped parts are equal and dependent, while the solo part is meant to be a solo with the tape as accompaniment. This is the first piece that I wrote for multiples in which I couldn’t play the instrument; it is also the first piece I wrote using my computer. This is no coincidence; I was able to write very specifically for the bassoon’s sound after I did a series of studies using a programmed bassoon sound that matched the real sound very closely, so I was able to hear what was going to happen without having a performer’s specific knowledge. The taped bassoons combine to create a sound that exploits the unique qualities of the bassoon, creating combination and interference tones. I started with unison pitches that created the richest sound and built the piece from there. Most of the subsequent pitches and phrases that I wrote occurred naturally before I notated them later on in the piece, and these in turn created others. So, in effect, the nature of the bassoon and its natural sound determined the direction of the piece. The solo part starts off by playing dissonant tones and then picks out notes that are being heard on the tape, continuing on to play a melody that “floats” above the taped bassoons.

Feu De Joie

Trio for Duo (1985)is for live and taped alto flute and voice, each part coming from four separate speakers placed in the four corners of the hall (the ideal situation in concert). Lines are passed from voice to voice, weaving a tapestry of matching and contrasting timbres. The voice in this piece is sung to sound as much like an alto flute as possible. By using glissandos, more “extra-notated” sounds were created than appear on the page.

Trio For Duo

"Dowland's Tears" is for 9 taped flutes (6 c flutes and 3 bass flutes) and solo C flute. It uses the melody from John Dowland's "Lachrimae" and explores the sound phenomena that happen when you layer that many flutes by overlapping and panning the tones for maximum effect. Performed by Manuel Zurria


Mary Jane Leach - Dowland's Tears

(Un) universo (nace). Visualiza, escucha y va creciendo. (Este) universo (seres sintientes) van mutando su capacidad para ver, oír y percibir información en el tiempo. Y (ese) universo total, entero y sensible se encuentra absorbiendo la vida que tiene por delante, los lados, por arriba y por abajo. Y va mutando, va observando, va entendiendo y sigue escuchando.

Ya no es (un) universo sino (cosmos) de elementos, recuerdos, registros y encuentros nuevos. De paisajes visuales y sonoros; un campus infinito de belleza y horrores que transpora en (elle) como maleta, recorre y explora lo desconocido para seguir (creciendo).

Sonidos y paisajes sonoros de Mar del Plata, grabaciones de zorzales colorados y benteveos en Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Fotografía: Damián Alférez 
Edición: María Emilia Pérez

#paisajesonoro #deeplistening #womeninsounds #fieldrecordist #fieldrecording #soundart #contemporaryarts #soundscape #environment #mardelplata #buenosaires #argentina #ambient

(Un) universo (nace)/ Paisaje sonoro de Buenos Aires y Mar del Plata.

This was originally issued in a pic disc LP boxset in an edition of 250 as part of the Prints of Darkness exhibition at Edinburgh Printmakers. This exhibition is still touring and LPs can be purchased from Edinburgh Printmakers.

"People Like Us illuminates this dark visual ride with ‘This Is Light Music’, an exclusive full-length picture-disc album in a limited edition of only 250. This record is available as part of a lavish limited edition boxed-set publication which houses the record and a pull-out poster in a gatefold sleeve, and includes essays by People Like Us and co-curator Norman Shaw. This publication is on sale throughout the exhibition, together with specially commissioned t-shirts and badges by the participating artists."

People Like Us - This Is Light Music - "Lavender White"

This is Nathan McLaughlin’s latest installment of his Echolocation series. Following releases on Digitalis and Gift Tapes, #5 also continues the organic and thoughtful work of his duo Loud & Sad. Focused on tape loops, layers of delay, and some chordal forms, each piece is meticulously and methodically built, with each sonic element given its due. This sense of pacing and care given to every moment is a crucial element of McLaughlin’s work, and it’s deeply attuned here. The pieces reflect the environment in which they were composed, tight-knit and rural; they mass like storm clouds, and then are barely there, leaving just the fluttering of a distant echo. Stretches of silence, and windblown expanses. Rich chords swell into deeply contemplative passages that are gradually stripped away. A gorgeous, hushed set of tape music.

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"Echolocation #5 extends McLaughlin's exploration of the elegiac and the dirge, adding some crunchy, roiling passages as well. Often McLaughlin's loops gather, in small enough increments to avoid overt, ham-fisted drama, a strong sense of the ominous. These tensions, as well as the fine structural drift McLaughlin is patient enough to permit, make the Echolocation series a fluid one, without a start or an end. Echolocation #5 should be heard as an installation in a big-hearted work, issuing from a musician with an immense gift for subtle music. They are sent from a recondite artist who may well disappear before you receive them, so there's no time to waste." - Jesse Goin / Crow With No Mouth

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Mastered by Eric Steiger
Artwork by E. Lindorff-Ellery and N. McLaughlin

NTR017 - Nathan McLaughlin - Echolocation 5 "A1 5.1"

On the long-awaited Exaptations, Toronto-based composer Nick Storring presents two highly textural, side-long pieces. On “Field Lines”, originally composed for Yvonne NG Peck Wan‘s dance piece, Magnetic Fields, a certain fragmented, uncertain openness is conveyed: a series of brief, dreamlike clearings are vignetted by pregnant silences or various levels of waking or sleeping states. Storring plays with a variety of tonal instruments that swell and tumble along while being nipped at by expressive percussion. Organic clusters develop within event-based sequences, stretching attention across multiple timbres and rhythms. On “Yield Criteria”, shifting drones move about like independent layers of ice on a lake in the dead of winter, slowing crumbling, sliding, and cracking in perfect harmony. Storring has written for dance and other interdisciplinary settings, and here he brings the delicate resourcefulness of a skilled accompanist, as well as a narrative sense that belatedly, profoundly blossoms.

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Field Lines:

Composed and recorded October 2013 - May 2014 for Yvonne Ng's dance piece, Magnetic Fields, which premiered in May 2014.

Nick Storring / various percussion and found objects, vibraphone, glockenspiel, balafon, chimes, hand bells, toy pianos, thumb pianos, voice/whistling, electric (NS Designs NXT4) and acoustic cellos, electric bass, electric mandola, violin, hammered dulcimer, Hohner Pianet T, Yamaha CP60M, Hohner Clavinet D6, flutes, harpsicle, strumstick, guitalele, steel pan, harmonica, melodica, pitch pipes, hulosi

Special thanks to Yvonne, Marie-Josée Chartier, Mairead Filgate, Luke Garwood, Christopher Willes. Thank you to Germaine Liu for the use of her vibraphone, and John Farah for the use of his Pianet.

Yield Criteria:

Composed and recorded February - June 2014.

Nick Storring / NS Designs NXT4 electric cello, electric bass, electric mandola, thunder tubes, Yamaha CP60M, toy piano, harmonica, duck call, voice, hand bells, glockenspiel

Elements were used in Eva Kolcze's film, All That Is Solid. Thank you to Eva, Spencer Barclay, Jason Doell, Brandon Valdivia, and Bryan Bray.

Processing and manipulation performed on the above sound sources (and the sound of a blank, chemically-treated 16mm film sound-strip) using combinations of the following: transducer speakers on various resonant chambers, instruments and surfaces; talkbox; spring reverb; recordable cassette walkman; various speakers; (contact) microphones.

Special thanks to Nicole Cultraro for her violin and kalimba, her support and inspiration, and patience with my process. Thanks also to Andrew Zukerman.

Gratitude also to all who listened and offered feedback.

Artwork and layout by E. Lindorff-Ellery
Printed by John Fitzgerald at Fitzgerald Letterpress, New Orleans

NTR042 - Nick Storring - Exaptations "Field Lines"

Notice Recordings is pleased to present the release of Portland, Oregon-based percussionist Matt Hannafin’s “John Cage: Four Realizations for Solo Percussion”, which offers attentive, probing interpretations of pieces that bookend the final thirty years of the composer’s work. Simultaneously restless and nuanced, Hannafin’s performance demonstrates Cage’s continued relevance and enduring ability to push performers beyond their performative biases and toward the unexpected.

Written with no instrumentation, “Variations II” (1961) and “Variations III” (1963) both provide toolkit-like sets of marked-up transparencies which are allowed to fall into random overlapping patterns. “c Ȼomposed Improvisation for One-Sided Drums with or without Jangles” and “One4” (both 1990) are two of only five pieces Cage wrote specifically for solo percussion, and explore Cage’s late-career interest in directed improvisation. “c Ȼomposed Improvisation” was written for percussionist Glen Velez, with whom Matt Hannafin studied just three years after the piece was created.

Commissioned by Notice Recordings, these four performances are in dialogue not only with each other but with Notice itself, which has its roots in the underground/DIY realm while also exploring contemporary/academic composition. The accessibility, inventiveness, and challenge of compositions like these make Cage a unique pivot point between these two worlds.

NTR049 - John Cage & Matt Hannafin - Sided Drums With Or Without Jangles

LLYN Y CWN 'Du Y Moroedd' CD (CSR302CD)

"Du Y Moroedd" (Welsh - the black of the sea) is an album of abyssal dark ambient - environmental soundscapes and atmospheres from above, below and beside the ocean; field recordings made onboard vessels at sea; sounds from submerged recording devices deep underwater; recordings from the coasts of North Wales to Greenland and the Arctic Ocean. 

"The tracks were created onboard the RV Prince Madog whilst conducting research using multibeam sonar to locate, survey and identify shipwrecks from WW1. The multibeam sonar creates images of the seabed using acoustic reflections. It is quite an experience to watch the sonar reveal an unsurveyed wreck and be the first person to "see" the ship for over 100 years; the vessel sitting at the bottom of the ocean waiting in the dark to be discovered. 

Research into the history of each wreck uncovers stories of boats torn in half by torpedoes and mines, U- boats hunted by destroyers and pummelled with depth charges. Many of these sites aren't just wrecks; they are mass war graves. The vital shipping channel to Liverpool passes the North Wales coast, the U boats would sit and wait; listening. When heard from under the water, each ship has its own unique acoustic signature based on the size of the engine, shape of the propeller, curve of the hull, these acoustic tell-tales were used by the U-boats to identify targets. The shipping lane became a shooting gallery of easy pickings and the submarines were able to slip away undetected into the black of the sea. 

The album features recordings from the hull of RRS James Clark Ross whilst ploughing through ice fields off Greenland, from a "sound trap" attached to an anchor as it descended through 80m of water to the seabed, and sounds from onboard the RV Prince Madog with its pitched engine drone. There is also a recording of the bell at Trwyn Du lighthouse, Anglesey, that was made in August 2020, days before the bell was removed to be replaced with a modern fog horn - prior to this, the bell had rung every 30 seconds since 1922" (Benjamin Ian Powell). 

File next to fellow Welshman Lustmord and Sleep Research Facility.

"Ambient soundscapes that thrill and terrify in equal measure" (Electronic Sound Magazine).

Presented in a 6-panel digipak with breathtaking photography by the artist. 

Track Listing:

1. Trwyn Du (4:49)
2. SS Apapa (6:34)
3. Adrift (4:46)
4. Submergence (5:09)
5. Du Y Moroedd (4:11)
6. The Hunt (5:02)
7. Descent (5:51)
8. The Skerries (3:52)
9. Erebus And Terror (5:12)
10. Stratigraphy (31:36)

https://coldspring.co.uk/csr302cd

https://coldspring.bandcamp.com/album/du-y-moroedd-csr302cd

Listen:  https://soundcloud.com/coldspring/sets/llyn-y-cwn-du-y-moroedd

Watch: 
'Du Y Moroedd' Album Promo: https://youtu.be/r1Jg4cs39O0
'Trwyn Du' Video: https://youtu.be/GcPD_vh2r1o
(Videos by Abby Helasdottir)

LLYN Y CWN:

https://llynycwn.bandcamp.com
https://soundcloud.com/llyn-y-cwn
https://www.facebook.com/llynycwn
https://coldspring.co.uk/llyn-y-cwn

....................................................................................

Out 25th February 2022

LLYN Y CWN Trwyn Du

releases March 16th, 2022

threeop.bandcamp.com/music

Written and produced by Rob Curulli
Mastering by Nil Hartman
Picture by Andrew Bates
Artwork by Rob Curulli

isometry

0F.digital - isometry (3OP007)

Playlist and other information available at: https://www.freeformfreakout.com/fffoxy-podcast-200-penultimate-press-henning-christiansen-archive-feature/

**This episode includes an interview with Mark Harwood of Penultimate Press and Thorbjørn Reuter Christiansen of the Henning Christiansen Archive.**

FFFoxy Podcast #200: Penultimate Press & Henning Christiansen Archive feature

GRFTPS016
Tom Leclerc & WILD - Ôme
limited edition cassette / digital - now on bandcamp
https://giraffetapes.bandcamp.com/album/me

Ôme

A3. Tom Leclerc & WILD - Douzeka [GRFTPS016]

IG: @KO___OL

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@thelotradio

OH OH with KO___OL & Co @ The Lot Radio 06 - 03 - 2022

"Semper Dolens" (2018)is for 6 taped flutes and solo flute. It is loosely based on a John Dowland piece "I Saw My My Lady Weep." It works with sustained harmony and dissonance. There is a saying about Dowland: "Semper Dowland, Semper Dolens" (always Dowland, always doleful), which inspired the title. Performed by Manuel Zurria

Semper Dolens

MARY JANE LEACH is a composer/performer whose work reveals a fascination with the physicality of sound, its acoustic properties and how they interact with space. In many of her works Leach creates an other-worldly sound environment using difference, combination, and interference tones; these are tones not actually sounded by the performers, but acoustic phenomena arising from Leach’s deft manipulation of intonation and timbral qualities: “an acoustic Through the Looking Glass world based on sound that the performer is not making.” (The New Yorker).

Feu De Joie

mjleach

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