such a gorgeous song. i can only imagine what it sounds and feels like in an intimate space

Does it need finishing? This is beautiful.

Daily Pep-TAK 4/4/2020: mesmerizing just intonation chamber music.

1. Ellen Arkbro - Chords for Guitar
2. Harry Partch - The Rose (Partch Ensemble)
3. J.S. Bach - Ciaccona in Just Intonation (Joshua Modney)
4. Catherine Lamb - Frame (Christine Tavolacci)
5. Charles Curtis - Unfinished Song
6. Pauline Oliveros - Deep Listening Ione (Oliveros, Dempster, and Panaiotis)
7. Nicola Vicentino - Madonna il poco dolce (Johannes Keller)
8. Marc Sabat - Plainsound Duet (Jennifer Ames Alexander and Colin Alexander)
9. Yoshi Wada and Tashi Wada - Reed Modulations
10. Michael Harrison - Mureed (Del Sol Quartet)
11. Bill Daugherty - Eidos (Ekmeles with Yarn and Wire)
12. Chris Otto - Violin Octet
13. Monteverdi - Adoramus te, Christe (Exaudi)

mesmerizing just intonation chamber music - Daily Pep TAK Playlist

Taken from 'Fringe' LP/Download (E064, Ecstatic 03/09/2021)

A gorgeous swell of intimate soundscaping from Felisha Ledesma on this simmering stunner for Ecstatic, despatching two extended, richly absorbing pieces weft from everyday detritius; synths, strings, voicemail, found sounds - hitting a similar spot for us as Ulla’s diaristic 'inside means inside me’ but with a more defined play of sound-as-light that gently and memorably tugs at the earlobes and heartstrings. 

Exploring a music of presence and ultra subtle inference, ‘Fringe’ is the 2nd release by Ledesma, student of Berlin's estimable Universität der Künste, following from a debut for Enmossed x Psychic Liberation earlier this year. Using AMQR - a software synthesiser built by Ledesma together with Ess Mattisson - both pieces here shimmer with elusive timbres that occupy a realm that feels lost between worlds - neither electronic nor acoustic, but more a sort of observational sound that radiates togetherness and warmth. 

Operating at insightful levels of synaesthesia, Ledesma poetically turns ostensibly humdrum sources into clouds of smoke - emails, voicenotes, walking along the water, a poem attached to an email, walking alone in New York during lockdown, going for a swim at sunset in the desert - all turn into a smudge of memory. When ‘Beamsplitters’ opens with a tangible human presence - a voicemail from a friend - it startles with its earthly pull, eventually getting lost in a tangled spool of found sound leaving just a trace of iridescent, intimate reverie. 

On ‘Golden Mirror’ Felisha gently diffracts a lonesome guitar phrase into a humming thizz with a steeply uncanny ability to jog the memory in a similar way to how olfactory stimulus can conjure feelings of nostalgia. It’s a trick familiar from an emergent new realm of lower case composers creating something like submerged, small scale symphonies that work counter to notions of classical excess or anodyne ambient, instead focusing on microcosmic, highly peronalised sort of worldbuilding that’s impenetrable, yet somehow entirely open.

Felisha Ledesma - Golden Mirror [E064]

Frame -  Catherine Lamb

A minimal Ebow-and-bass drone in E minor, built around a 12-note melody that dissolves one note per repetition.
Recorded during a lyrical Ebow session, using long sustained tones and slow melodic reduction.
A small ambient/minimalist experiment on top of a deep E drone.
Part of the Disquiet Junto project: disquiet0728

Legato Ebow Redux (disquiet0728)

BEATRICE DILLON - Drum programming, electronics, synthesizer, bass guitar, field recordings

RUPERT CLERVAUX - Vibraphone, drums, percussion, field recordings, additional drum programming


A Different River Once - Beatrice Dillon & Rupert Clervaux

Caterina Barbieri & Kali Malone - Glory (Final Movement)

The final movement of Glory is a slowly evolving canon for two electric guitars pouring landscapes of bliss from the pythagorean region of the harmonic spectrum.

Composed at EMS in Stockholm SE 2015.
Recorded at Villa Strozzi in Florence IT 2016.

Side A from XKatedral Volume III
Edition of 100
Released on October 6th 2016

Caterina Barbieri & Kali Malone - Glory (Final Movement)

2nd track on 'Intact' (Jj funhouse, 2016)
http://www.jjfunhouse.com/catalogue/jj010

Data

ulla - table

Ursula Bogner: Winkel Pong
Format: 7” Vinyl/DL
Label#: faitiche15
Release date: Sept 8th 2017
 
Faitiche is delighted to announce the release of a new Ursula Bogner record (faitiche15). Winkel Pong contains three previously unreleased pieces from the archive of the sound researcher who died in 1994. In 2008, Jan Jelinek put together a first album from Bogner’s tape archive (CD/LP Recordings 1969-1988, faitiche01). A second followed in 2011, compiled this time by Andrew Pekler (CD/LP Sonne = Blackbox, accompanying the book of the same name with texts, photographs and Bogner’s graphic oeuvre). For Winkel Pong the tape archive was passed on to Lucrecia Dalt. The Berlin-based Colombian sound artist and musician chose three tracks from the 1980s (exact dates unknown), editing the tape recordings for their release on Winkel Pong.
 
Gundrun Gut (Malaria!, Einstürzende Neubauten), an activist and reluctant chronicler of Berlin’s underground scene since the 1980s, has worked with Lucrecia Dalt. She is also familiar with Ursula Bogner’s work. Reason enough to ask her for an interview:
 
Jan Jelinek: Gudrun, how does it feel to be constantly obliged to talk about the 1980s Berlin underground as someone who was there at the time?
 
Gudrun Gut: I’ve learned to live with it as there are clearly too few people who witnessed it first-hand. Maybe it’s even important to do these interviews as a woman – so that someone actually says that women, too, have written music history. Men tend not to mention this. But it’s true, people do always ask the same questions.
 
JJ: Did you know about Ursula Bogner in the 1980s? Did you ever meet her?
 
GG: No, I never met Ursula Bogner in person and I only discovered her in 2008 thanks to Faitiche. But that’s no surprise: firstly, I don’t know every single woman artist, and secondly, far too many women artists never see the light of day. In the male-dominated art and music market, women are not considered important – or worse still, they are not understood. Look at artists like Sonia Delaunay, Eva Hesse, Bebe Baron, Delia Derbyshire and Daphne Oram. Some of them have now been discovered – but only recently. A lot has changed in the last few years: there is a growing awareness of art and music made by women.
 
JJ: But isn’t it annoying that the conventional distribution of roles still applies? One example: in many articles, Ursula Bogner has been presented as an “electronic housewife”.
 
GG: When Ursula Bogner is referred to as an electronic housewife, then sadly that reflects the situation of many women artists at the time. Women could only pursue artistic activities in private – transcendence was reserved for men. This has still not been overcome. But today, the home has become a site of professional production for all. I’m talking about bedroom producers: it is totally normal to make art and music at home. And that makes things interesting, because “working at home” is no longer associated solely with women.
 
JJ: For Winkel Pong, Lucrecia Dalt compiled and remixed three pieces from the Bogner archive. You know Lucrecia and you’ve already worked with her. How did you meet?
 
GG: I met Lucrecia through MySpace – I think it was 2007. Back then she was still living in Medellin, Colombia. Lucrecia’s father made loop machines for her that she still uses. The Sound of Lucrecia was part of my 4 Women no Cry compilation series on Monika Enterprise, each with four producers from different countries. She’s great fun to watch as a performer because she has a unique sense of rhythm and feel for music. Above all I’m impressed by her sustained approach as an artist, someone who can and does think around corners. I’m thinking specifically of her album Ou, for which she ploughed her way through post-war German cinema, using it as a source of inspiration for a soundtrack. This is proof that she thinks like an engineer – so it makes perfect sense that she would want to explore the work of Ursula Bogner.
 
Berlin, 2017

Ursula Bogner: Atmosphärische Energie (edited by Lucrecia Dalt)

Excerpt of Josh Modney's reinterpretation of J.S. Bach's "Ciaccona" in Just Intonation, as performed by Modney on "Engage" (New Focus Recordings)

http://www.newfocusrecordings.com/catalogue/josh-modney-engage/

J.S. Bach: Ciaccona (1720) with Just Intonation (excerpt)

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.

-

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

ASUNA & Jan Jelinek: Relief, Pt.1

Ellen Arkbro - CHORDS(SUB029)
VINYL pre-order: https://ellenarkbro.bandcamp.com/album/chords

With ‘CHORDS’, the Stockholm-based musician and composer Ellen Arkbro returns to Subtext, following her acclaimed debut album ‘For Organ and Brass’.

This new longplayer sees Arkbro adopt a more minimalist approach, focusing on the immediate qualities of sound and elegantly expanding the tonal capacities of acoustic instruments using precise, subtle synthesis.

Composed of a carefully selected combination of tones, ‘CHORDS’ stretches, extends and obscures the timbral character of the instruments it is performed on.

Across both tracks, Arkbro examines the sonic materiality and harmonic quality of chords. She considers how the compositions occupy space rather than time – transposing theoretical possibilities into the phenomenal realm.

As a part of Arkbro’s systematic investigation of harmonic sound, ‘CHORDS’ proffers a divergence from conventional ways of listening. This work allows for a form of listening which goes beyond the mere reception of outer stimuli in letting the listener experience their role as active, and as embodying the sound itself. Space rather than time becomes the primary locus of listening as subtle movement of head and body reveals the inner complexities of ‘CHORDS’.

@ellenarkbro

CHORDS

Pre-order

Ellen Arkbro - CHORDS For Guitar

Zaumne - Élévation

Charles Curtis: Performances & Recordings 1998-2018 (SLT-005)

Saltern presents its fifth release, Charles Curtis: Performances & Recordings 1998-2018, the first comprehensive collection of recordings surveying the career of renowned, American cellist Charles Curtis. Selected by Curtis and Tashi Wada from recordings spanning the past two decades, the collection offers a broad, inclusive view of Curtis's activities across the diverse worlds of music he inhabits, containing rare, unreleased recordings, and never-before-released music by Terry Jennings, Richard Maxfield, Éliane Radigue, Alison Knowles, and Curtis. The wide-ranging scope of this release speaks not to a musical restlessness, but to a genuine spirit of inquiry, as these areas of activity for Curtis have existed concurrently in dialogue, not simply in succession, for decades. Over two hours of music by composers and artists with whom Curtis is closely associated including Éliane Radigue, Guillaume de Machaut, Tobias Hume, Silvestro di Ganassi, Terry Jennings, Morton Feldman, Anton Webern, Olivier Messiaen, Alison Knowles, Richard Maxfield, and Curtis himself. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu with liner notes by La Monte Young, Spencer Gerhardt, and Tashi Wada. Custom packaging and screen printing by Alan Sherry.

Performances & Recordings 1998-2018

Charles Curtis – Unfinished Song (1998)

Get this + the original here https://carmenvillain.bandcamp.com/

So High You're Mine (2020 Rework)

Record label run by Tashi Wada and distributed by Forced Exposure. Limited UK and EU distribution by Republic of Music.

Charles Curtis – Unfinished Song (1998)

Saltern

Recent comments

Bleeptwig

denisio

Patros15

𝐏𝐢𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐇𝐮𝐝𝐬𝐨𝐧 - 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐫

Related tracks