Rising Phoenix

Full stream of Ellen Arkbro's stunning composition "Mountain of Air," a rework a track from her latest work, 'for organ & brass,' out on Subtext Recordings on April 14.

More info: https://www.xlr8r.com/news/2017/04/premiere-hear-a-stunning-new-composition-by-ellen-arkbro/

@ellenarkbro
@subtext-recordings

More info

Premiere: Ellen Arkbro - Mountain of Air

Ryusuke Seto - Dream Land (1979)

Second track from the new Jon Hassell album 'Listening To Pictures (Pentimento Volume One)' - Out now:
smarturl.it/listeningtopictures

Following the news last month of the first album in nine years by Jon Hassell, Ndeya Records is proud to share the second piece of music from Listening To Pictures (Pentimento Volume One). Whereas first track “Dreaming” utilised a repetitive, pulsating structure of lush texture, “Pastorale Vassant” deploys a different style with it’s skittering, insectoid, electronic gamelan sound. 

It has also recently been announced that to coincide with the release of the album, Jon will be making a rare appearance in New York City, reading excerpts from his forthcoming book The North And South Of You. The writing expands on some of the thinking that has underpinned his musical work for the last 40 years since he coined the term ‘Fourth World’ to describe his graceful interface of deep tradition with new technologies.
https://issueprojectroom.org/event/jon-hassell-riffs-hyperopia-and-music

JON HASSELL ON “PASTORALE VASSANT”:
"Hillside Pastorale" in the Catalan dialect of Spain.

I was staying in Deya, on the island of Mallorca at Mati Klarwein's house where flocks of goats roamed in the hills at night, each one with a slightly different neck bell. One balmy Summer midnight I stayed awake to record this floating, constantly-changing "gamelan" that enters in the distant background halfway into the piece.

Asked to say something about the piece, I listened again and, sure enough - "Twittering Machine" - the title of a Paul Klee painting of 1922 popped into my mind. Although I knew his work for years and his Pedagogical Sketchbook was in my library, the "twittering" title was what stuck to me and I had only a vague memory of the painting. But when I looked at the painting while listening I was amazed at how they reflected off one another in a kind of unintended "tone-painting" way (where the picture sounds like the music and vice-versa).

This highlights the difference in "Listening to Pictures" as the title of the record and "listening to pictures" programatically (i.e., does the music paint the picture like the title?)
 
Another notable comparison here is how two possible angles on "listening" appear:
1) programmatically - where features of the "painting" are being evoked as in "tone painting." (Debussy - La Mer)
2) in the meaning of the title, Listening to Pictures, where vertical listening facilitates perception of shapes and a heightened consciousness of the entire audio spectrum which leads to your own "internal paintings."

NOTE: THESE ARE NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE!!

© 2018 jon hassell

Jon Hassell - Pastorale Vassant

Midori Hirano - Close to Life
From the album “Mirrors in Mirrors”

Release date: 5th March, 2019
Pre-order “Mirrors in Mirrors” here: https://daisart.bandcamp.com
© Daisart / daisart.info

From the liner notes:

If you stand between two mirrors facing each other, you’re faced with a curious and unique visual sensation – endlessly repeating reflections bounce off one another into an infinite, spiralling prism. Any movement from your vantage point derails the point of focus, and transforms the illusion in real-time before your eyes. Light bends, and with it, colours slip in and out of dominance, in an
Escherism of endless space, despite no change to the dimensions you inhabit in that ever so concrete space between two mirrors.

Midori Hirano speaks of “waning lights” and “edges blending into fog” as some of the sensory indicators inspiring Mirrors In Mirrors – her debut on Daisart – and these Impressionistic sentiments are deeply imbued within Hirano’s delicate, restrained compositions. The hallmarks of modern classical, electronica and ambient are adopted as an assemblage to explore nuanced tones and techniques less dictated by those stylistic underpinnings, perhaps somewhere hovering between – but never too far away – keenly aware of form and
function.

An emphasis upon the piano is an immediate point of reference for placing Hirano’s work within a broader context, but important to point out is the subtle and careful use of synthesisers and effects processing throughout the record – sometimes providing a more detailed background terrain, sometimes taking centre stage. Whichever instrument she turns her hands to, Hirano has crafted a record with enough dedicated focus and space to allow the listener to immerse oneself in her devised temporal expanse, an Impressionistic liminal space of Mirrors in Mirrors.


Written, produced, recorded and mixed by Midori Hirano in Berlin, Germany 2017-18. 
Mastered by Sean McCann of Recital Program.



“Mirrors in Mirrors” comes in a first edition of 200 x 12inch 145gm black vinyl (incl. download) with Pantone printed inner and outer
sleeves designed by Jeroen Wille and Rudd Ruttens [ruttens-wille].

Midori Hirano - Close To Life

TNM001 - Neph / Phi - 8/10/12
https://klausmuzik.bandcamp.com/track/neph

Neph

Emily A. Sprague - "Your Pond"

Taken from Water Memory / Mount Vision

smarturl.it/rvngnl58

©2019 RVNG Intl. // www.igetrvng.com

Water Memory / Mount Vision

Emily A. Sprague - Your Pond

First Terrace Records have the honour to present an album of new work by influential and idiosyncratic artist K. Leimer.

Kerry returns to First Terrace with his first full length on the label following his part on the 12” split series with FTS001. The album finds the composer working in a solemn & focused mode, rendering deep sonic landscapes that shimmer, sink into themselves and play host to a slowly emerging carousel of auditory apparitions. 

Emerging in opposition to the sunless days & countless distresses of current US politics, each track is imbued with a refreshing sense of equanimity - in Kerry’s own words, "Authoritarian ideas that have persisted somewhere in the depths of human nature for millennia have resurfaced at a crucial moment for the environments we all inhabit — natural, cultural, intellectual and economic. The power and influence of this ideology will again prove catastrophic, as it already has for many people in many parts of the world. Authoritarianism, along with the refutation of our shared responsibility to one another and to objective knowledge in favor of personal gain & gratification consistently lead to disaster. Yet, somehow, a significant number of people seem to feel that this time will be different. To some extent they are right. It will be infinitely worse. 

Irrational Overcast is preoccupied with the perpetual failings of human tribalization, of assuming dominance over nature, of choosing belief and ideology over objective reality. The impetus was brought into immediate focus by the destructive impulses and actions of such excrescences as the Trump Administration and his republicans, as well as the blatant dishonesty and bigotry of thousands more retrograde, ill-informed nihilists operating in and outside the pubic sphere. 

I do not profess that music — especially an experimental, lyric-free music — can change or influence such circumstances. But this is the context in which we now live, and this has shaped the music of Irrational Overcast — a coping mechanism for living under clouds of baseless beliefs and simplistic ideologies that disfigure and stifle what is an admittedly difficult though really quite lovely world. Music, to my mind, can not clearly express anything so literal, or metaphoric, or allegoric — but Irrational Overcast makes the effort to articulate the problems created by some enduring and banal aspects of human behavior. Which is the reason it is built of lo-fi, deformed emergent or regressing or fragmented phrases, subsumed by distortion, noise, wow and flutter… and played with the understanding that there can be no more bedtime stories.”

The album is released worldwide on July 5th, on LP & digital formats, with artwork featuring images from Richard Misrach’s series of photographs documenting American petrochemical landscapes. A limited run of 30 editions will be made that include a bonus tape titled ‘Irrational Clearing’ - featuring two beautiful long form tracks from the Irrational Overcast sessions.

Irrational Overcast

Order the LP

K. Leimer 'Uncertain Instruction'

A track from the album Island Alchemy out 11/19/19 on Constellation Tatsu.

Sofie Birch - Myg

*debut LP Temporary Music out Jan31 2020, vinyl now shipping*
http://asatone.bandcamp.com
_
Asa Tone is Jakarta-born Melati Malay and New York based Tristan Arp and Kaazi. In January 2018 the trio travelled to Indonesia during Melati’s annual return home, set up a temporary studio in a house nestled in the jungle’s canopy and recorded a series of improvisational pieces together, later edited for brevity. The music incorporates both digital and analogue processing and largely draws upon the groups collective voice, a small selection of instrumentation (Rindik, Moog Sub 37, Infinite Jets, Suling) and their immediate environment. Despite this, they aimed to record a kind of music together that doesn’t seem to come from one specific place, but instead, from everywhere.

The result is an idiosyncratic voyage of equatorial excursions in voice, mallets and synthesis, both transportative and fluid, yet firmly grounded in the earth. Cyclical, randomized patterns grow and blossom during these often delicate and heartfelt renderings, staying with the listener long after both sides fall silent.

Temporary Music LP will be released on January 31 2020 on Leaving Records. It is the group’s debut album.

Emily A. Sprague - Your Pond

RVNG Intl.

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