9 April 2021

Delphine Dora : keyboard, voice
Mocke : guitars, effects

Recorded and Mixed by Cyril Harrison

Un Songe Élémentaire

Solo Guitar 2 was recorded by Bill Nace in 2008, in a good-sounding room in Bennington, Vermont. 

This year the record, originally released as a now (nearly) extinct cassette, is reissued without it’s mysterious and (maybe?) long-lost sibling Solo Guitar 1 (Like any good punk demo -- which, both aesthetically and energetically, Solo Guitar 2 is -- the thrill of discovery is made only sweeter by the potential of future discovery). 

The vinyl release comes a little less than a year after Bill’s first “official” solo record, BOTH, which was released by Drag City in May, 2020. The two records don’t necessarily stand in opposition, but they are at different points on the spectrum of production, tone, mood, time, place, age, career. Where BOTH is softened by the warmth and precision of a studio, there’s a wildness to Solo Guitar 2 which approaches the experience of witnessing Bill perform live. 

Made up of mostly brief pieces -- songs, practically -- Solo Guitar 2 winds tight, then unwinds, or sometimes snaps apart. Crackling, itchy static morphs into heavy, watery vibration, layered on metallic rattle. There are moments where that Bennington room sounds as sterile and lonely as a deserted art gallery. And then it becomes spacious and warm, like a cathedral filling with the hum of the universe. 

The bulk of Bill’s releases are collaborations with other artists, who are drawn to him (at least in part) because he’s an innovative player and a deep listener. Those qualities hold, and in certain ways intensify when he’s on his own. As he takes a series of unlikely tools across his prone guitar with the grace and urgency of someone at a loom or an aircraft control panel, there’s a sense of reaching inward. But where some might meander or navel-gaze, Bill’s playing is a process of constant dynamic construction. What unfurls can feel intensely personal, and often -- for reasons I don’t always understand -- very moving. Bill isn’t interested in micromanaging his listeners’ experiences, but he does make room for us. 

Composer Pauline Oliveros observed that when we listen deeply to the world around us, we sometimes notice very subtle and quiet differences in sounds that we thought were familiar. As a result, she writes, “the slightest difference may lead you to a new creative relationship.” 

Bill is, I think, tuned in to these subtle and quiet differences. But, in a truly punk fashion, he flips this for the listener, making unfamiliar and not-very-subtle noise into something akin to (but also distinct from) familiar sounds: traffic outside your window, the soft roar of a conch shell to your ear, static between radio stations.Solo Guitar 2, full as it is of shades and moods and life, offers a fresh way of hearing. 

Margaret Welsh

Philadelphia, PA 2021

OM069 - Bill Nace "Solo Guitar 2" [sample]

Daniel Carter / clarinet
Samara Lubelski / violin
Bill Nace / electric guitar

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Recorded by Robert Mizaki at the Glove in Brooklyn NY on 12/6/2017
Cover art by Samara Lubelski
Covers screened by Alan Sherry

OM73 - Live at Glove - Side A - Untitled

Alaban

This year London has experienced several weekends of the hottest summer and that moved the Australian sound artist Kate Carr, whose practice is centred on articulating the relationship between people and place through sound, to point her microphone at the city. This volume is based on her recordings during a particularly hot long weekend in a corner of very busy intersection in London, where she resides now. In Heatwave, Carr is interested in both the serious and also the more prosaic aspects of soundscapes related to climate change. She investigated the throbbing summer music from her neighborhood, people’s efforts to keep cool, and the uneasiness which accompanies these everyday activities in this moment of environmental crisis. The way these pieces construct and compensate, with all the tangible sounds that fold into larger moods via multiple instruments, exemplifies her acumen in creating sonic stories that reflect our multi-layered experience of reality.

Humidity - from Heatwave out now via Hasana Editions

Frédéric D. Oberland and Irena Z. Tomažin - ARBA, DÂK ARBA - LP

Release date - June 5th 2020
Catalogue nr. - HG2005
Format - Ltd. Vinyl/digital

https://hallowground.bandcamp.com

Tracklist:
1. Grotta (14:29)
2. Amena (06:43)
3. Fumes (08:29)
4. Hieromancy (09:07)
5. Hereafter (04:54)

Credits:
Irena Z. Tomažin: voice
Frédéric D. Oberland: electric hurdy-gurdy (boîte à bourdons V) and processing
Recorded and mixed by Romain Poirier at Le Fresnoy, National Studio of Contemporary Arts, in Tourcoing. Edited by Fanny Béguély, Frédéric D. Oberland & Romain Poirier at Mer Noir, in Paris. 
Mastered by Lawrence English.

///
Frédéric D. Oberland and Irena Z. Tomažin’s »ARBA, DÂK ARBA« was conceived as the soundtrack for the eponymous installation piece by the French artist Fanny Béguély. First presented as part of the group exhibition »Panorama 21 - ›Les Revenants‹« at Tourcoing’s Le Fresnoy Studio National des Arts Contemporains in December 2019, Béguély’s chemically painted photographs focused on humankind’s propensity for self-examination and its attempts to probe the mysteries of the past, present and future. Oberland’s heavily processed electric hurdy-gurdy, the »boîte à bourdons,« provides the foundation upon which the Borghesia member Tomažin unfolds her gripping vocal magic(k). Their dense mesh of soundscapes and singing mediate between the mystic and the modern, the natural and the all-too-unreal to further examine our persistent desire to decipher the signs we find in nature. As the first collaboration between these prolific experimental artists, »ARBA, DÂK ARBA« is as evocative and thought-provoking as the art that has inspired it.

It’s easy to see why a curious instrument like Oberland’s electric hurdy-gurdy would be well suited for the duo’s ends, and within its first few minutes the opening track »Grotta« makes it clear that the Oiseaux-Tempête co-founder is more than capable of weaving dark psychedelic sound tapestries with only limited means. The ritualistic energy that Béguély’s »ARBA, DÂK ARBA« draws on is channeled through abstract drones that mirror the aesthetics of the eight suspended paper rolls the artist’s audience were faced with. When the music becomes denser and Tomažin finally enters the picture with her signature glossolalic vocal performance, it seems as if the drones emanating from her musical partner’s curious instrument bleed right into her voice. Even as the sound of the boîte à bourdons becomes more visceral and Tomažin’s voice more discernible, »Grotta« remains as intangible as the mythological oracles that had informed the work of Béguély. Shorter pieces like »Amena« or the closing track »Hereafter,« though condensed, offer just as much to decipher - a whole musical world to get lost in, full of riddles and uncertainties.

»Fumes« and »Hieromancy« in the second half of the LP are the best examples of how much creative friction lies at the heart of the French experimentalist and the Slovenian singer’s collaboration. While in the former song, Tomažin first takes the lead singing uncanny, circular motives before stepping aside so Oberland can let the processed sounds of his hurdy-gurdy evolve into chilling crescendi, the latter sees both of them take turns in channeling the pervasive mysticism around them. Blurring the lines between the physical and psychic as well as the real and the hallucionary with their music, Frédéric D. Oberland and Irena Z. Tomažin’s »ARBA, DÂK ARBA« is one of the most radical albums in recent years. An unsettling dialogue between two kindred, yet freely wandering spirits.

Frédéric D. Oberland and Irena Z. Tomažin - edits(HG2005)

Huellas Entreveradas

La Ba-Balle du Chien-Chien a la Me-Mere

group A's new charity compilation series "NO Recording" vol.1 mostly focused on demo from our creation period for the multimedia performance piece 'anOther' (Dana Gingras, Sonya Stefan, Mikko Hynninen) which was developed through 2017-2018 and premiered at Agora de la danse, Montréal in April 2018. All profits we receive from vol.1 will be donated to NAACP Legal Defense Fund(https://www.naacpldf.org/).

Listen full/Donate: https://groupa.bandcamp.com/album/no-recording-i

NO Recording I (group A Charity Compilation)

So what ?

Parallels_Rei Nakatani & Romuald Tual

Phil Julian is a UK based composer and improviser active since the late 1990s principally working with modular electronic devices and computers.

Audio works by Julian (and under the Cheapmachines alias) have been published on labels including Entr’acte, Banned Production, The Tapeworm, Harbinger Sound, Confront Recordings, Staalplaat (Open Circuit imprint), con-v, Beartown Records as well as numerous compilation appearances.

He also runs the Authorised Version label.

Julian has collaborated on remixes, recordings and performances with Tomas Korber, Michael Renkel, Jason Kahn, Daniel Jones, Kostis Kilymis, Tom Mudd, Angharad Davies, John Macedo, Dominic Lash, Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga, Dale Cornish, Ryan Jordan, Maurizio Bianchi, Nihilist Assault Group, The New Blockaders and GX Jupitter-Larsen of The Haters as well as being a member of the improvised drone ensemble Signals with Mark Beazley and Chris Gowers and playing as part of Mark Wastell’s improvising group The Seen.

9 April 2021

Phil Julian

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