From the forthcoming album SG - For Lovers Only / Rain Suite (Faitiche 33)

SG - Western Affect

from the album Charles Cohen - "Brother I Prove You Wrong" out on Morphine Records 2015 - doser026LP

Composer, improviser, and Buchla Music Easel master Charles Cohen returns to Morphine with a suite of new material. In keeping with the timbre spectrum of his semi-modular system, Brother I Prove You Wrong is built around pointillist analog tones—Cohen's cosmic "beeps and boops"—that swarm and scatter in mesmeric patterns across four sides. Moving through surrealistic textural overlays and industrial miasma, the album's nine tracks reveal a more introspective and personal side of the artist, following from a retrospective LP trilogy released via Morphine in 2013. Those assembled works, dating back to the late '70s, quickly became essential listening and brought Cohen—at the time largely unknown outside Philadelphia's experimental circuit—to critical renown. 

Brother I Prove You Wrong was recorded in Berlin in September 2014 using the Buchla Music Easel, with production help and support from Rabih Beaini. Mastered by Neel and curated and designed by TankBoys; cover art by Nathalie du Pasquier.

Charles Cohen - The Boy and the Snake Dance

Petit Moustique is the 4th track of the upcoming 'Tropic Daze' cassette by Alpár (JJ007)
Out end of September.
http://www.jjfunhouse.com/catalogue/jj007

Music by  Bálint Zalkai
Published by Jj funhouse, 2015

Alpár - Petit Moustique (JJ007)

Versatility

IN THE WOODS AT THE END OF THE YEAR

Experimental cinema sonics, electroacoustic research practice and shadowy wind instruments come together to form this unique interpretation of the mythical city of gold. Utilising rare, half forgotten Soviet era synthesisers Vladimir Karpov creates immersive soundscapes under the name XYR. The Formanta mini keytar and the Alisa 1377 lend Karpov’s music strange, seldom heard atmospheres which the St. Petersburg native then combines with field recordings, toy percussion and wood flute to further build upon his utopian narratives.

Part concept album, part nod to Popol Vuh, his attempt to channel the thematics of the ancient tale of the Muisca people through his modest home studio left a lasting impression on us here at 12th Isle and we’re proud to present a selection of the tracks on vinyl for the very first time. Originally confined to just 25 cassette tapes, for this edition we have assembled some of the most inspiring tracks from the sessions as well as the bonus closing piece ‘Aguirre Song’. Immediately engaging, sincerely heartfelt and strikingly original, these are recordings we have returned to time and time again.

Limited edition LP comes housed in screenprinted sleeve. ‘El Dorado’ recorded April – August 2014, originally released via Illuminated Paths (March 2015).

https://12thisle.bandcamp.com/album/x-y-r-el-dorado

ISLE003

XYR - El Dorado LP (ISLE003)

Artist: Jan Jelinek & Computer Soup
Album: Improvisations And Edits, Tokyo 26.09.2001
Label#: Faitback10
Release date: May 4th 2018

Faitiche is happy to be releasing the album Improvisations And Edits, Tokyo 26.09.2001 on vinyl for the first time. For the original 2002 CD on Soup-Disk and Sub Rosa (Audiosphere), Jan Jelinek and the Japanese trio Computer Soup (Satoru Hori – trumpet, Osamu Okubo - toys & electronics, Kei Ikeda - toys & electronics) presented eight tracks all recorded one afternoon in the trio’s living room in Tokyo. They are excerpts from a joint group improvisation that subsequently underwent rudimentary editing, on which Jelinek and Computer Soup worked separately.

Jelinek met the three musicians at his first concert in Japan in 2001, at Tokyo’s Yellow club, where Computer Soup performed as the support act. Delighted by their free improvisation on pocket-sized electronic toys, trumpet and oscillators, he arranged to meet Hori, Okubo and Ikeda a few days later for a session at their apartment. The resulting three-hour recording, made on their living room floor, formed the basis for Improvisations and Edits. A few days later, Jelinek returned to Berlin. Over the following months, they separately chose passages from the recording that were then edited and assembled into an album.

Formed in Tokyo in 1996 as a quintet (including Shusaku Hariya and Daisuke Oishi), Computer Soup began by performing with acoustic instruments on the streets of Shibuya. Ikeda und Okubo soon switched instruments, and from then on the group’s minimalistic but densely woven sound was defined by electronic toys, oscillators and Satoru Hori’s trumpet. Their first album was released in 1997 on the Japanese label Soup Disk. Eight further releases followed.
 

From the reviews of Improvisations and Edits, Tokyo 26.09.2001 in 2003:

The mind-blowing first track "Straight Life" is perhaps the best example of what the album has to offer. Jelinek's trademark smears and washes occupy the midrange, like ghosted images of Joe Zawinul's electric piano floating quietly in the wind. DSP jazz modes are set against a walking bassline (possibly computer generated) and a gently tooted trumpet complete with Harmon mute, a dead ringer for Miles Davis' Prestige-era ballads. The effect is something like a three-dimensional film, with different realities on each layer; images of what jazz was manage to interact with a real-time demonstration of all it could be.
pitchfork.com
“Improvisations and Edits” is a warm and mellow Ambient release with beautiful glitch fragments, static noise bursts and real trumpet intersections. However, there are times where it is the exact opposite, mainly effect-laden, overdriven and bouncy with a lack of melodies and focus, so be aware of these specific tracks.
ambientexotica.com
Often deliciously dreamy and hazy, “Improvisations and Edits” is like listening to an exceptional instrumental jazz performance while half-conscious or under some sort of chemical influence. Computerised blips and bleeps, loops and treatments and murky sonic skips curl up around desolate horn notes and scattered instrumental noises that culminate in elegant music.
exclaim.ca

Jan Jelinek & Computer Soup: Straight Life

Folklore of Plants Vol.II - Venefic Garden

From the 2011 album "Sentimental Favourites" – originally released on Dekorder. Available digitally on Bandcamp at the nice price of pay what you want.
https://andrewpekler.bandcamp.com/album/sentimental-favourites

Sentimental Favourites

Name your price

The Twilight Of Your Smile

Artist: ASUNA & Jan Jelinek
Album: Signals Bulletin
Label#: Faitiche18
 
Faitiche is delighted to announce the release of a new collaboration between the Japanese sound artist ASUNA and Jan Jelinek: the album Signals Bulletin brings together joint improvisations and compositions made over a period of three years in Berlin, Kyoto and Kanazawa. ASUNA’s meandering organ drones merge with Jelinek’s pulsating synthesizer and field recording loops to create dense superclusters that span broad harmonic arcs.

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Watching the Japanese sound artist ASUNA playing the organ, some people might be surprised. ASUNA is no virtuoso flying over the keyboard in a rage. Instead, with the calm gestures of an office worker, he cuts strips of adhesive tape to the correct length before sticking them onto the keys of his instrument. In this way, large clusters of keys are held down, creating a dense and sustained range of frequencies, while the sound artist continually prepares further sets of keys or removes tape again. I have rarely seen a more convincing performance concept, with such a power to fascinate.

I first met ASUNA when we both gave a concert at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, his home city. He performed the organ drones as described above and I immediately knew I wanted to collaborate with him. Six years and five meetings later, we completed Signals Bulletin. The album includes both joint improvisations and compositions, recorded in Berlin, Kanazawa and Kyoto.

Whether using prepared organ, Casio keyboards or mechanical plastic toys, ASUNA creates rich textures of sound that barely change over long stretches of time. It is a music without breaks. For a while, I was unsure how my loops made using modular synthesizers and live sampling fitted here – until I realized the role I had to take in this duet: I would provide the rhythmically pulsating foundation over which his dense continuums could unfold.

The result is harmonically drifting superclusters that put us into a meditation-like state. It can perhaps be compared to Automatic Writing – a mode of creative expression floating somewhere between concentration and distraction. Both the structure of our pieces and our approach to our instruments allow a similar “absence”: we let the machines play and repeat themselves – while we, in a mild form of trance, adopt the role of observers, intervening only occasionally.

It is no coincidence that ASUNA owns a collection of Doodle Art – drawings jotted down during conversations or while talking on the phone. It is said that works made like this point to the unconscious and reveal pet motifs – because a doodler always inadvertently returns to his or her favourite themes. The artwork for Signals Bulletin features pictures from the collection, in this case sheets of paper from the pads provided in stationery shops to test out pens. The special quality of such doodles is that the jumble of drawings is the work of a collective whose individual members do not know each other. Layer by layer is added, by someone different each time – until it becomes a dense cluster of lines and symbols ...
Jan Jelinek, Berlin 2018

SG - Western Affect

Andrew Pekler