Name: L'Egitto dopo La Cicala by Andrew Pekler
Duration: 2 min 54 s
Description: Based on Franco Battiato's L'Egitto Prima Della Sabbia

this is so beautiful what is the instrument !?

Really love this. So minimal.  You let us fill in.

Based on Franco Battiato's L'Egitto Prima Della Sabbia

L'Egitto dopo La Cicala

London’s abundant waterways and parks provide an oneiric muse for Cucina Povera and Ben Vince’s resounding debut full-length collaboration, an engrossing suite of weightless sax, synth and disklavier-bedded, noirish nocturnes that land somewhere between Grouper and Terry Riley. 

Centred around Maria Rossi aka Cucina Povera’s muzzy vocal loops and the faintest melodic motifs, London-based composer and multi-instrumentalist Ben Vince accompanies on saxophone, synth and piano, shrouding Rossi's vocals in swirls of dimly lit psychedelic smoke. As a newcomer to London, Rossi was "caught up in a sort of wondrous overwhelm” - a feeling that seeps through every movement of the almost hour long album. Working mostly at the Roundhouse, the pair find a musical confluence between Rossi's words - "fluid, dreamy, hazy ideations" - and Vince's shadowy renditions.

Vince's plasmic echoes and Rossi's aerial delivery form a poetic union, twisting and painting each sound in pearlescent shades. Rossi's folk roots shine through like cracks of dawn sunlight on 'Sumu Puistossa' ("fog in the park"), reverberating over organ and dream-zone sax; her words tip into muted surrealism thanks to the controlled chaos of Vince's bleak treatments. His grasp of jazz is transfixing: bending sax motifs like ghostly memories of music from another timeline, smudging them into the soundfield. It’s most effective on 'Siellä Näen Kaiken' ("there I see everything"), where sickly, dissonant notes flicker like an almost-extinguished candle alongside motorised furniture music courtesy of a Disklavier.

Born out of wonder, daydreaming innocence and creative discovery, 'There I See Everything ‘ is the sound of two exploratory collaborators swimming into each other's ideas. From the Terry Riley-esque transcendence of '∞' to the sacred incantation of long-form closer 'Pikku Muurahaiskeko' ("little anthill"), the pair expose a new layer of creativity with each turn, gradually zooming out from discreet, vulnerable beauty to encompass a gently orchestrated chaos of sustained, sublime tension.

Cucina Povera & Ben Vince - Sumu Puistossa

Editions Mego presents The Psychologist, the sophomore album by the Istanbul born and raised, Berlin based electronic music composer and sound artist Hüma Utku.

As the title suggests, The Psychologist, is a series of sonic essays based around themes of psychological phenomena and can be read as a musical enquiry into the human condition. With Utku’s background as a graduate of Psychology and her current practice as a conceptual music composer we see the two main threads in her professional career intertwine on this unique and ambitious release.

Including recordings of Buchla 200 from Utku’s Elektronmusikstudion residency in October 2020,The Psychologist is a genre aversive work that embodies elements of synthesiser music, electroacoustic, experimental techno, industrial, modern composition and spoken word. Piano, string compositions and vocals hold weight throughout a number of pieces providing a dramatic acoustic edge to the psychological explorations contained within.

The foreboding mood of much of this release is the product of investigation that lends the unsettling theme of anticipatory grief to the mood of the tracks Light of All Lights and Continuing Bonds. Islands of Consciousness refers to Jungian metaphor for consciousness whilst the unnerving Rüya twists around dream analysis in Gestalt psychology. Fuel For The Flames proceeds as a buzzing and swirling representation of alchemy and psychological symbolism. Dissolution of I is haunted by a strange sensation of dissociation whilst defense mechanisms support the sublime Sublimation. The bright shapes of Chironian Wound represent archetypes and analytical psychology whilst the fried soundscapes and rhythms of Ataxia encapture neurological states.

The results unravel with both the clockwork rhythms of the human body and the unpredictable nature of the psyche, the pieces follow arrhythmic patterns in a harmonious way. It tells the raw and intimate story of the human experience with a new work whereby the predictable operates in parallel with the unexpected and like human experience itself, is dark and complex.

Composed, Written & Produced by Hüma Utku  
Piano by Hüma Utku  
Vocals by Hüma Utku  
Double Bass performed by Adam Pultz Melbye  
Cello performed by Florina Speth (aka Schloss Mirabell)  
Violin performed by Marta Forsberg  
Cover photography & art by Gözde Güngör  
Design by Eloise Leigh

The Psychologist

Dissolution of I

Hüma Utku 'Dissolution Of I' (EMEGO 302)

Multicolor

Alexis Gelinas performs "Prelude in C Major" by JS Bach (written 1707) from the Well Tempered Clavier (published 1722). This piece would originally have been performed on a Harpsichord or Clavichord

JS Bach - Prelude In C Major (BWV 846) arranged for Glass Marimba

Music for Serge Modular, inspired by Maryanne Amacher's music and research. 

PLEASE USE SPEAKERS, NOT HEADPHONES.

Perceptual Geography (excerpt)

Stefan Fraunberger - Elegie
from the album "Quellgeister#3-Bussd" expected October 2019.

Composed, performed and produced by Stefan Fraunberger. 
Recorded in September 2016 except B3 and B4 in September 2018 in the fortified church of Bussd. Bellows pumped / interpreted by Johanna Magdalena Guggenberger except on track B3 and B4 by Nicolai Guta.
Mastered by Neel at Enisslab Studio, Rome
Cover Artwork by George Sowden - Designed by M-L-XL
Supported by SKE / Austro Mechana

doser034LP - Morphine Records 2019
All rights reserved to the respective owners.

Stefan Fraunberger's Quellgeister#3 Bussd is Recorded entirely on an abandoned church's organ in the village of Bussd, Romania, the album is the third installment of the series by Austrian artist and composer Stefan Fraunberger. His research on the influence of nature on culture touches on time, periphery, memory, and transience as evidenced in his Quellgeister research. The album is an archeological sonic research on the deteriorating Organ discovered in the saxon church in Transylvania.

Stefan Fraunberger - Elegie (doser034LP preview)

FUJI||||||||||TA, iki, LP

Release date - April 3th 2020
Catalogue nr. - HG2003
Format - Ltd. Vinyl/digital

https://hallowground.bandcamp.com

Credits:
All music composed, played and Recorded by FUJI|||||||||||TA
Mixed by Makoto Oshiro
Mastering by Lawrence English at Negative Space

Tracklist:
1) keshiki (09:42)
2) nNami (09:20)
3) osoi (10:12)
4) sukima (07:03)

///
"FUJI|||||||||||TA has created a work that operates as a beautiful nexus between the material and immaterial qualities of music. 
It is a lived-in dreamscape of deep, rich tonality. A remarkable debut."
(Lawrence English)

///
FUJI||||||||||TA, real name FUJITA Yosuke, is a Japanese sound artist. After countless performances in different contexts either solo or along artists such as Yamantaka Eye of Boredoms and the legendary avant-gardist SUZUKI Akio as well as a slew of solo releases, his LP »iki« (»breath«) for the Swiss-based Hallow Ground label is his first in nine years. On these four pieces, Fujita explores the idiosyncratic sound qualities of the pipe organ he has built all by himself in 2009. This - quite literally unique - instrument features only eleven pipes, an air pump called »fuigo« which was modelled after a traditional blacksmith’s one and has no keyboard. Inspired by traditional gagaku, it was designed to evoke rich landscapes rather function as just another musical instrument. While his previous records saw FUJI||||||||||TA explore various modes of abstraction, »iki« is a highly emotive yet meditative album, musically restrained but full of imagination.

»keshiki« immediately sets the mood for this record with a long sustained note that is punctuated by the soft clicking of Fujita’s air pump. Once Fujita carefully starts bringing melodies into play, the interplay of the drone and the discrete rhythmic element gives way to a fuller harmonic whole. »keshiki« is an intimate piece that perfectly displays the artist’s knack for painting a rich sonic picture with only a reduced palette. »nNami« juxtaposes the sounds of two pipes that are out of tune with each other, creating a hypnotic sensation of ebb and flow (»nami« translates to »wave«) that is full of subtle friction. It’s a staggering artistic interpretation of the instrument’s material characteristics. Clocking in at ten minutes, »osoi« (»slow«) is an overall melancholic piece that explores the relationship between different tone colours through minute changes in pace. Finally, »sukima« (»blank space«) is the shortest and the most rhythmic piece of the four. Composed of only staccati, it is a masterful exploration of the harmonic qualities Fujita’s stunning pipe organ has to offer.

Recorded between September and December of 2019, »iki« marks the culmination of FUJI||||||||||TA’s ten-year-long work with the instrument that he had built without any prior knowledge and started to teach himself to play without a manual in sight. It is, in other words, the unique result of a unique musical mind paying his dues to the uniqueness of his own creation; introspective and welcoming at once.

L'Egitto dopo La Cicala

Andrew Pekler

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