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KEXP ~ PACIFIC NOTIONS - part 3

Woodwinds

NTS Radio // Fragrant Sacrifice

HAOMA RADIO

A mix featuring artists taking part in OBEY Convention XII, the 12th instalment of new sounds and radical ideas in K'jiupuktuk / Halifax, Nova Scotia -- May 30 - June 2nd / 2019

OBEY XII - Side B

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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

Newport 1962

Inflated Tear - Outro (Live)

Black Gold / Between Memories

Between Memories (feat. Niki Randa)

Fresh Bread

Nara Deer

Taksim

Earth Rot

The Warnings Part I

pom pom

Picture Me Gone

Some Days Are Better Than Others

Camille and the Ocean

A Period of Review (Original Recordings: 1975 - 1983)

Entr'acte

Piano Works Revisited

Revelation

from the CD Optimist on Obsolete Units (2018)

optimist (remastered)

Kelly Moran - "An Atom"

Nocturne

VOL. 4 :: SLAVES OF FEAR

PSYCHONAUT

Agora

Fennesz - We Trigger the Sun

2) Yes! Come Parade With Us
"I remember leaning right off the slipway in Sheringham to record the waves that I used in this track. I had to get really close to the surface of the water to be able to hear the pebbles moving around. It was early in the morning and the sound was so alive that It made me want to make some very positive and uplifting music."

Watch John's hand-animated video here>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaCOvylhxks&

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On the auspicious occasion of the release of his mystical seventh artist album, technological force-of-nature Leafcutter John teams up with fellow stalwarts of idiosyncratic electronica Border Community to gift unto the world the small-yet-perfectly-formed joyously utopian artefact Yes! Come Parade With Us. Weaving field recordings from the Norfolk coastline together with layers of lyrical modular synth, these seven bright-eyed folk anthems sing with positivity and a sense of place, and feel right at home amongst the British label’s unparalleled ever-pastoral and often-organic electronic legacy.

During the summer of 2017 exiled Yorkshireman Leafcutter John returned to his one-time home of Norfolk (having graduated in Painting from Norwich’s School of Art and Design back in 1998) and set out on foot along the sixty mile section of Norfolk Coast Path which runs from Hunstanton to Overstrand, trusty audio recording device in his pocket. “And very soon the physical act of walking began to make me think about music,” he explains. “My footsteps dictated the tempo and imagined melodies accompanied me as I slowly moved along the increasingly wild and magical stretch of coastline. Stresses of the city were replaced by the fall and rise of the North Sea and endless salt flats. Sounds from the environment filtered in and I would stop often to record what I was hearing around me.”

Back home in London, the hours of amassed field recordings would form the backbone and inspiration for a whole album worth of outpourings from John’s six-years-in-the-making modular synth. From the evocative sound of sea birds on Pillar and Stepper Motor to the colourful conversation from a country pub in This Way Out, the apposite selection of samples which made the final edit provide the perfect jumping-off point for John’s synths to soar with abandon, at times uplifting, frenetic, haunting, hypnotic or meditative, but always atmospheric and with unstoppable propulsion.

“Above all else, I wanted the album to exude a sense of constant forward motion but at a very human scale,” says John. Thus drummer friends Tom Skinner (Hello Skinny) and Sebastian Rochford (long-time collaborator in the twice Mercury Prize-nominated band Polar Bear) were roped in to lend their suitably clattering human momentum, on Doing The Beeston Bump and Dunes respectively. Working in tempos to match his walking speed throughout - “whether trudging along a rainy shingle beach or running up wildflowering clifftop paths” - Yes! Come Parade With Us is perfect traveling music, and once unleashed upon the world is sure to provide the soundtrack to plenty more journeys to come. 

Beginning his own musical journey back in 1999 on Mike Paradinas’ Planet Mu Records and with a widely-varied twenty year career in electronic music already under his belt, the release of his masterful seventh album sees Leafcutter John on career-defining form. An intensely personal project, John has also hand-drawn the labyrinthine album art and animated his own suitably exuberant rainbow-hued video to accompany the boundless enthusiasm of restorative title track Yes! Come Parade With Us. The resultant album gem is both assuredly successful in his stated aim of capturing “both the rugged beauty of the environment and the positivity I felt walking through it” and incredibly infectious, with a harmonious utopian outlook which cannot help but rub off on the listener.

Yes! Come Parade With Us

Leafcutter John - Yes! Come Parade With Us

Artist: Bath Consolidated
Album: Narryer Gneiss Terrane
Format: Cassette / Digital
Release: April 12, 2019

Music by Noelle Johnson
Visual art by Galen Tipton/Seth Graham

A millennial is someone caught in between the past and the future.
This perspective naturally has a desire to be recognized. There is a fear in this generation of being lost or effaced from the canon of mythology, for example, legacy fomo.
This album is copying and pasting my peers into Dante's Inferno or the bible and seeing what happens.
This sits in the background on the theme for Narryer Gneiss Terrane. The main thrust is studying the aesthetics, flow, and syntax of a mythology attempting to form a millennial mythos. I thought often in imagery rather than words. For the track medulla, I pictured a boltzmann brain appearing at the big bang with the personality of a millennial, the great filter climbing the walls of the biblical bottomless pit.

Bath Consolidated - Narryer Gneiss Terrane

"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

Pre-order: https://www.kitchen-label.com/store/no-24-kotonoha-ironomi/

“kotonoha” is ironomi’s 8th album and first ever release on vinyl. A tonal portrait of microscopic nuances particular of a Japanese midsummer saunter through deep emerald green forests and tranquil fields, transcribed into a meditative pastoral reverie created with crystalline piano playing, lute acoustics and real-time processing.

The title “kotonoha” (琹の葉) comes from a poetic anachronistic metaphor, combining form of leaves (葉 ha) and plucked string instruments (琹 koto) depicted in classical antiquity. With a distinctive sound that matches the sonic architecture of Japanese aesthetics, ironomi adds “koto no ha” into their extensive catalog already defined by its uniquely committed minimalism and serenity.

“kotonoha” was originally built on a sequence of four continuous scenes that makes up one long-form composition. The titles of these improvisational pieces (shioribi, namisora, ayumikaze, hagoromo) invoke a literal kind of sensuous, fleeting phenomena. The beauty and charm of these tracks lie in their impressionist fusion with Japanese nature and sensibilities. ironomi’s pieces rarely build and despite their sparse acoustic density, they have a presence that cuts sweetly into the listener’s reality. ironomi created their very own brand of “environmental music”, the literal translation of the Japanese term kankyo ongaku (環境音楽) - music designed to harmonise with, rather than dominate, its natural surroundings. In the specific spatial context of “kotonha”, the record heals the aural sense away from our jangling cities and restless daily environments.

The album includes two additional compositions “tsukishirube” and “maigo”, the latter being regularly featured as the concluding passage that brings ironomi’s live performances to an end. The expanded cadence remained a firm fan-favourite since 2010 and now documented in recording for the first time.

ironomi releases “kotonoha” on 30 August 2019 via KITCHEN. LABEL worldwide. Available on limited edition translucent green vinyl LP (Estimated shipping: 29 Sep 2019), CD and digital formats, with artwork by Tokyo-based photographer Yoichi Onoda. This record is mastered by Gen Tanabe at Studio Camel House in Yamanashi, Japan.

Tracklist
1. 栞日 shioribi
2. 波空 namisora
3. 歩風 ayumikaze
4. 葉衣 hagoromo
5. 月導 tsukishirube
6. 舞子 maigo

Released by KITCHEN. LABEL
Ⓟ & © 2019 KITCHEN. LABEL

琹の葉 kotonoha

ironomi - 舞子 maigo (琹の葉 kotonoha, 2019) - preview

Whatever Awaits

Sunday

TRACK: "ALL NONE TOO WARM"
ALBUM: "SOMEDAY WE'LL BE TOGETHER"
ALL SONGS WRITTEN AND PERFORMED BY LAURA ORTMAN (WHITE MOUNTAIN APACHE) VIOLINS, HELPENSTILL PIANO, ELECTRIC GUITARS, APACHE VIOLIN, SUBWAY RECORDINGS, VOCALS, MEGAPHONE, PINE BRANCHES, WINDCHIMES, BELLS, CASIO

RECORDED AND MIXED BY MARTIN BISI AT BC STUDIO BY THE BANKS OF THE GOWANUS CANAL, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

MASTERING BY FRED KEVORKIAN AT KEVORKIAN MASTERING, INC., NEW YORK CITY

LAURA ORTMAN COPYRIGHT 2010
ALBUM ART BY LAURA ORTMAN

++DEDICATED TO REBECCA, ASHLEY, EASTON, KATRINA, NICHOLAS AND SHEENA SHYA+

ALL NONE TOO WARM

Odyshape

Shouting Out Loud

|| OUT NOW || 

Buy/Stream >> lnk.to.HOTC146 <<

Following a remix on Hottrax, James Burnham aka Burnski is back under his James Solace alias to release Mind Music, a formidable first full release featuring four equally as impressive tracks released this February on Hot Creations.

Keep On sets the tone of this sumptuous release, rumbling sub-bass holds the track together, like a huge wave it slowly gains intensity, given room to breathe until it unfurls into a powerful weapon. A heavy dose of playful funk is applied on Catalyst, with guitar, squelching synth and a dash of warm soul. Mind Music is a deep and hypnotic piece, an addictive vocal loop over laser sharp synth and becomes firmly embedded in the psyche. Finally, Groove does what it says on the tin and sees James expertly craft another solid beat where growling bass combines with licks of pulsating acid that will undoubtedly send the dance floor into raptures.

UK hero James Solace also known as Burnski has made his name through a penchant for moving through many styles of music with ease, always being one step ahead of the trend and mixing the new with the old. Whether it be his trade-mark tech-house grooves released under Burnski or through his Instinct alias and label where he channels drum and bass, garage and 2-step, his productions are always of the highest quality. He boasts regular gigs at esteemed venues including DC10, Fabric, Rex Club and Watergate. As well as this forthcoming EP under this alias on Hot Creations, he also has big records to come on Knee Deep in Sound, Four Thirty Two and Last Night On Earth. Also with a new live set that aired for the first time at Mint Warehouse recently for the Four Thirty Two party, expect the new James Solace project to take his career to the next level.

TRACK LISTING
A1. Keep On
A2. Catalyst
B1. Mind Music
B2. Groove

Mind Music

Keep On

Buy/Stream

James Solace - Keep On

Face

Anecdote

Reminiscence

Slowdance

Transmeccano-Replica (1987)

Harmological

Mestirawi Debdabe

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).

Semper Dolens

mjleach