from 'Progress Trap' [CD|LP|DIGITAL]
Denovali Records · den362
available on all formats at http://denovali.com/ricardodonoso

Ten years after the transcendent syncopated debut ‘Progress Chance’, Ricardo Donoso returns with a pulsing retrospect of rhythmic determination and wide-eyed wonder with ‘Progress Trap’, his new album for Denovali. As is customary with Donoso, the moods on these electronic miniatures vary from piece to piece; some somber, brooding, and laden with mystery, others starry-eyed, tinged with sci-fi, and hungry for adventure.

Connections are finally forged between Donoso’s early hardware synthesizer arpeggiation experiments, his darker and more abstract work with an emphasis on synthetic textures, pulsation, and sound design and the more recent extreme full throttle electronic mayhem and prog inspired technical opuses found in the Calibrate/Re_Calibrate/Content era. 

Progress Trap is as harmonious as its predecessor allowing dissonance to subtly seep in, providing mere hints at the undercurrent of threat hidden beneath the music's smooth surface. If ‘Progress Chance’ was naive and innocent, ‘Progress Trap’ is mature and calculated. Perhaps some of the optimism has extinguished, but there is a stalking exhilaration which threads through the entire album, taking on merely different shades between sides – as with most of Donoso’s work something verging on a deep longing always lingers heavily as an aftertaste. There's a lot to digest on Progress Trap, as with Donoso’s entire canon, but as always, the effort is repaid.

Progress Trap

Ricardo Donoso - Master and Emissary

from 'The Last Garden' [CD|LP|DIGITAL]
Denovali Records · den366
available on all formats at http://denovali.com/birdsofpassage

After 3 years, New Zealand based Alicia Merz breaks her silence with her 5th Birds of Passage album ‘The Last Garden’. Alicia doesn’t share much with the public, except through her music, and so this album offers a rare glimpse into her secret world. Lose yourself in a universe of minimalist soundscapes, reinvented shoegaze, and the words of a poet who all too well knows the cold loneliness of the dark, but can find the breathless beauty in it also.

"Birds of Passage is humble and heartbroken. Her warm words are crimson berries that bear fruit in the cold depths of winter, hanging over crooked, bare branches where nothing else survives. Her dove-like vocals soar, but her introverted lyrics blossom with the fondness of love." (Fluid Radio)

"Alicia presents us with an endearing invitation into her fragile world, a captivating journey through the landscapes of her emotional euphoria and agony, a further commitment to musical experimentation… The cold minimalist-drones, distorted field recordings, and sparse instrumentation, illustrate an icy, desolate and dark world. It’s as if we are listening to the sound of winter itself; an audio exposure to the unforgiving elements of winter." (Headphone Commute)

The Last Garden

Birds of Passage - The Creed

Oliver Doerell (Dictaphone, Swod)and Iranian musician Jawad Salkhordeh find themselves merging eastern and western music on a record that blends reality and mysticism into a unique soundscape. 

"Schatten" is the first glimpse into the their album "سایه
[sāje]", out November 26th on Sonic Pieces.

Oliver Doerell & Jawad Salkhordeh - Schatten

Tape available via IMPREC.com

Brian Thummler’s  Ghost Birds combines piano improvisations and noise to create a uniquely compelling musical duality. These 7 pieces, selected by John Brien, are inspired by a lifetime of experience, art & poetry as well as Cage, Merzbow, Satie, Sun Ra.

Ghost Birds takes flight with experimental simplicity. The interaction of noise and piano, a synergy that also pushes and pulls, creates profound musical dimensions available to the attentive listener. 

Ghost Birds was recorded in a studio and on an enclosed porch where an old, noisy out of tune upright grand piano lives. Traffic sounds seep in and plant themselves in the recording while the human soul empties into the piano. 

Who is Brian Thummler? To quote the poet Lu Yu, he is “the old man who does as he pleases.” 

This first edition of Ghost Birds is packaged in a handmade, letterpresses O card slip sleeve.

Brian Thummler - The Outline Of Nameless Things - Tape - PRE-ORDER AVAILABLE

S 489

from DUO
by France Jobin + Richard Chartier
on mAtter, Japan
release date: Dec 16, 2018

DUO is the first collaborative project from minimal composer France Jobin and Richard Chartier.

DUO creates an “intemporelle“ and pervading atmosphere, where sounds intermingle within an intricate and delicate system delineated by spatial and temporal boundaries.

composed by  France Jobin and Richard Chartier.
mastered by Stephen Mathieu 
thank you to Yukitomo Hamasaki and Shuhei Miyagi
design by Richard Chartier

https://www.matter.jp/work/#/duo-france-jobin-richard-chartier/

DUO 1

"Reiterations" by First Tone from "Reactions" 2xLP/Digital due out October 2019.

"Reiterations" by First Tone

From 'Slowly Dismantling' on Room40, out on November 1.

With 'Slowly Dismantling,' Los Angeles based artist Yann Novak problematizes understandings of ambience as homogenous and static. 'Slowly Dismantling' deconstructs ambient, pulling it way from the blank and the atmospheric, refusing the perceived luxury of sound within which context is erased. Reflecting on his formative experiences as a queer youth in middle America, he explores the idea of these acoustic and social spaces as zones of liberation within which a spectrum of identity is formed. He creates a series of dense sonic fields that reflect on how the past can be decoded and utilized as a device for contextualizing the future.

Slowly Dismantling

All Things End, Sometimes In Fire

Having recently signed to FatCat’s 130701 imprint, and following closely on from Deutsche Gramophon’s release of Jóhann Jóhannsson’s ‘Last and First Men’ project which Yair co-composed, Yair Elazar Glotman & Mats Erlandsson’s sophomore album ‘Emanate’ is a powerful and stunningly executed extended duration work that utilises a fantastic ensemble cast and continues to explore their ideas of a 'displaced sound’ - combining electronic and acoustic sound sources through both analogue and digital means to create an ambiguous composite work, a music that sounds neither clearly electronic or acoustic, existing instead in some in-between space.

In many ways, the idea of a longform music is unsuited to and out of phase with our times. And yet, there is recent evidence of a reaction against this – witness the rise of the practise of mindfulness and the cultural elements of a ‘slow living’ movement; the huge success of Max Richter’s marathon 'Sleep’ project; and the emergence of an expansive musical niche that draws from drone, electroacoustic and classical traditions and prioritises a more immersive, durational sound worlds - see artists like Kali Malone, Ellen Arkbro, Clarice Jensen, Abul Mogard, William Basinski, Claire M Singer, and labels like Longform Editions and XKatedral. Music here is intended to function not as ambient backdrop to other activities but as a deep listening, intensive immersion.

Aligned with these approaches, Glotman & Erlandsson’s work is suffused with a chromatic density and a tendency towards an edgy darkness that puts it closer to Hildur Guðnadóttir’s ‘Chernobyl’ score or Jóhannsson’s ‘The Miner’s Hymns’. It shares that same brassy, bass heavy weight and glowering, simmering sense of tension as well as a similar, sliding feeling of instability. Its authors cite the influence of  Renaissance vocal polyphony; Giacinto Scelsi’s ‘Pranam II’; György Ligeti’s 1967 piece ‘Lontano’ (heard on the soundtrack to Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’ and Scorcese’s ‘Shutter Island’); as well as American composer Ingram Marshall, and Iceland’s Valgier Sigurdsson. Gorgeously recorded, beautifully focused and measured throughout, ‘Emanate’ is a texturally rich, deep spectrum exploration that flows and unfolds almost seamlessly throughout its fifty-minute span to create an energy field which feels simultaneously static and yet continually shifting.

Emanate

pre-order

Yair Elazar Glotman & Mats Erlandsson - Procession

Taken from Origamibiro's LP Miscellany on Denovali Records, out March 26.

More: www.orbmag.com/music/

@origamibiro
@denovali

Miscellany

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Premiere: Origamibiro - Attract/Repel

Available as Name Your Price on Bandcamp: https://astrangelyisolatedplace.bandcamp.com/album/overtone-davids-song

What began as a joke between two friends, ended with Markus Guentner creating a new track entirely from just one instrument all for a good cause. 

A normal gift wasn't on the cards for David Westlake's Birthday and instead, he challenged Markus' aversion of the Saxophone to see if he could make a track using this instrument as the only source. The result is, Overtone (David's Song), made of nothing but 100% Saxophone. Whether you can recognize it or not, stylistically it's up there with Markus' best music to date and proof that a limited palette can sometimes bring out the most creative output. The track is only available here on Bandcamp (for Bandcamp Day) to help raise funds and support for Choose Love helprefugees.org - a charity nominated by David Westlake.

ASIP035 Markus Guentner - Overtone (David's Song) [Mastered]

Markus Guentner - Overtone (David's Song)

Fusing music, art, culture, and technology.

www.orbmag.com

Premiere: Origamibiro - Attract/Repel

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