DAVID GRANSTRÖM, Empty Room - LP

Release date - April 2th 2021
Catalogue nr. - HG2102
Format - Vinyl / digital
Hallow Ground

hallowground.bandcamp.com

Tracklist:
1) Obsidian 09:22
2) Aeon 10:56
3) Sapphire Visions 04:50
4) Occultations 10:08
5) Transience 04:45

Credits:
All tracks composed, recorded, performed and mixed by David Granström 
Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi
Photography by Aron Mattsson
Cover design by Greenpointless

///
On »Empty Room,« David Granström works with slow transformations, cyclical and isometric patterns as well as just intonation as a way to create harmonic stability, allowing his long-form pieces to develop their own unique temporal and spatial qualities. A prolific figure in Stockholm’s experimental drone scene and a collaborator of Hallow Ground label mates Maria W Horn and Mats Erlandsson, the Swedish composer navigates through moments of quietude and crushing volume on these five tracks. Sonically and atmospherically, the pieces on »Empty Room« simultaneously call to mind Fennesz’s most meditative work or the physical experience of seeing Sunn O))) live, blending guitar recordings and synthesised sounds with forceful effects similar to those of Mario Díaz de Leon’s Oneirogen project while still being as moving and delicate as Alessandro Cortini’s solo work. The album is marked by melodies and harmonies that are the product of a peculiar working process that turned the composer into an intent listener collaborating with, rather than simply using technology. 

Having been invited by the self-organising artist group The Non Existent Center for a residency to Ställbergs Gruva, a defunct iron ore mine in Sweden’s Bergslagen region, Granström took his guitar as a starting point for his compositional work that heavily relies on real-time sound synthesis. »I seldomly use the instrument as a sound source in the final compositions and rather transcribe and orchestrate the harmonic structures using sound synthesis,« he explains. »On this album however, I chose to include the actual recordings of the guitar in order to extend the spectra between non-referential synthetic sounds and embodied referential sounds.« Working with precise tunings in order to blend the timbre of the synthesis with the harmonic structures of the composition, he created composite sound objects in which the harmonic elements blend into each other. 

Through the re-amplification of synthetic musical materials from the inside of the abandoned mine, his original compositions were enriched with site-specific sound qualities before he further refined them in a singular working process. Granström works with algorithmic and generative processes, using the SuperCollider programming environment and thus blurring the lines between generative and creative forms of composition. »One of the things that I like about this way of working is that it creates a distance between myself as a composer and myself as a listener of the music that is produced entirely by the system,« he says. Granström’s technologically aided eschewing of the conventions of composing doesn’t make the end result any less personal, however. By listening again and again to the newly generated output, Granström simply took on a different role in the process of finalising the music, with the technology and the sounds becoming his co-authors. 

By creating systems that generate music, he gains a new perspective on (musical) time, says Granström. »There doesn't have to be a fixed length to the music at all,« he explains. »And by writing music with this in mind, my focus tends to shift towards writing cyclical structures that gradually change and transform over time.« Simple parts, in other words, that emerge as the five complex wholes that form »Empty Room,« a record that itself seems to take on different forms with every new listen.

DAVID GRANSTRÖM - Occultations (HG2102)

Wave Forming (2019)
Xavier Lopez and Bryan Eubanks, synthesis
Newton Armstrong, binaural mix
excerpt from All That Dust release, 2020
https://allthatdust.com/

Wave Forming (binaural mix) excerpt

vital022
2022 élan vital recordings 

Manja Ristic / Toni Dimitrov - Dystopian 001

1. Manja Ristic - Nothing Has To Happen, Fortress Europe
2. Toni Dimitrov - Against Civilization

🏴 'Dystopian 001' is split release between the sound artists Manja Ristić and Toni Dimitrov, and it is part of the new 'Dystopian series', showcasing a more abstract, darker, obscure and politically infused side of the sound of élan vital artist roster. Inspired by everyday life in the last several years living in realized dystopian visions and darkest predictions, the sound on this series will be the soundtrack for our daily dystopian reality. We are all aware that the future of our civilization is not bright, but that doesn't mean we are not living in an exciting epoch.

🏳️ Part one brings two longer pieces, presenting the dark side of the mystical long form experimentations by the Serbian violin and field recordings diva Manja Ristić and the latest field recordings experiments of the sound art naturalist Toni Dimitrov. Through this joint release the artists are trying to explore the potential for change of the society, resulting in a mature, expressive and complex album. 

Composed and arranged by Manja Ristić & Toni Dimitrov 
Mastering LaPlant Studio Belgrade
Cover drawings by Dorian Dimitrov
Design by Toni Dimitrov

Release date 27th March 2022
 https://elanvital.bandcamp.com/album/dystopian-001

Manja Ristic - Nothing Has To Happen, Fortress Europe (excerpt)

Sans En Altérer La Nature

Teaser clip from the half hour long piece "Myrskymielellä", adapted from a 1891 poem by the Finnish national poet, Eino Leino, taken from the upcoming self-titled album by new project "All That We See or Seem". LTD LP + Digital coming end of October 2022.

"Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?" This quote from a poem by Edgar Allan Poe sums up the lamenting, primal work that is "All That We See or Seem"; a project conceived between Finland, England and Brazil. The self-titled album consists of two long-form pieces of droning mysticism hailing from the trio of Gruth (concept, production, electronics), Ellen Southern (vocals, field recordings, percussion) and Johanna Puuperä (violin, modular synthesizer, additional vocals).

All That We See or Seem - Myrskymielellä (teaser)

Available now via: IMPREC.com

The Well & The Gentle, two of the major works of Pauline Oliveros, are presented here in a first time reissue on double vinyl in a gatefold sleeve with extensive liner notes.

If Oliveros had followed a more conventional composer's path she may have, all social obstacles aside, been considered among the major minimalist and contemporary classical composers of her time. However, Oliveros approached composition in a more egalitarian manner. She wrote music for musicians to interact with or, in the composers words, she wished to create "an inclusive and interdependent and unfolding world of relationships."

Oliveros' propensity towards inclusion is part of what makes this work so remarkably distinctive. The Well & The Gentle is carefully crafted, allowing performers to participate in the creation of the work. Players are asked to collaborate, focus, react and make imaginative choices. Only then can the performers "pass through stages of awakening to the possibilities inherent in making music, working together, leading to the essence of what can shape musical impulses and individual freedom simultaneously."

Unlike most major composers of the era, Oliveros' work focuses on collaboration and improvisation. Lacking in the rigidity that often defines minimalist work of the era. For Oliveros, the processes involved in making music are as fundamental as the music itself. Oliveros creates, as Arthur Sabatini put it so eloquently in the liner notes,

"A world in which sound and the practices entailed in making music merge; become, at once, source and atmosphere, energy and essence, presence and dynamic."

Pauline Oliveros "The Well & The Gentle" - 2LP - Release Date 3.10.23

This is area of intersection between National Highway 55 and Phan Thiet - Dau Giay expressway, in Phan River commune, Ham Tan district, Binh Thuan province.
It's recorded at 12:48 PM, May 6, 2024.

Phan River Expressway Entrance

Degradation Loops was a 16 day composition that gradually and completely 'bit crushes' my 2015 album Yellow Bell. Produced for a group show at the 55 Sydenham Rd, Marrickville gallery in Sydney, a process of sonic destruction unfolds in response to visual artists destroying and reassembling their work, to create new work, and to question the dominance of commercial imperatives within art. Here is a 14'48" time lapse edit of the 16 day composition, 2016.

Degradation Loops_55 Sydenham Rd Marrickville

The B side of Dissolution. LP/digital release on Glistening Examples, November 11th, 2016.  25 LPs were special edition, with 35 mm slides embedded in the clear vinyl. Copies of the regular LPs are still available on Forced Exposure
https://www.forcedexposure.com/SearchResult.html?SearchType=Basic&Type=artist&Key=olivia%20block

DISSOLUTION B

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.

snf09 : mark templeton "ocean front property" part 1

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