Recent releases

BERGLJOT - Regnet Avløser Solen Som Avløser Regnet

Release date: 12.11.2021

SOFA MUSIC and FULL RHIZOME-SONORO are pround to present the new album of Ingar Zach/Michele Rabbia – Musique pour deux corps (SOFA589).
Born with the same passion for sound, "Musique pour deux corps" brings together the duo Ingar Zach/Michele Rabbia for their second release. The two percussionists present an album full of invention, research, and development of a new percussion-music, using an unlimited and inexhaustible material that only percussion can
offer. The skins are used as surfaces to make different metals, wood and objects resonate, and the electronics are introduced to make evident some of the infinite layers that can revealed behind the natural sound. The two instrumentalists share the same instrumental set-up. With their gestures the propose a dance of sound and visual sensitivity.

Ingar Zach/Michele Rabbia: Typology from Musique Pour Deux Corps

NUDE ON SAND (Jenny Hval/Håvard Volden) - Enough With The Breathing I

SILENCERS (Benoit Delbecq/Kim Myhr/Nils Ostendorf/Toma Gouband) - Les Rives

Release date: 27.05.2022

Martin Taxt – microtonal tuba, hand bells, composition
Rolf Erik Nystrøm – alto saxophone, hand bells
Laura Marie Rueslåtten – organ, hand bells
Inga Margrete Aas – double bass, hand bells
Peder Simonsen – microtonal tuba, hand bells, modular synthesizer

Second Room is Taxt’s second album in a series of works investigating possible relations between music and architecture. In this work written for alto saxophone, two microtonal tubas, double bass, church organ, hand bells and modular synthesizers he is inspired by the Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto, and his ideas on different concepts of living. 

In a lecture at the Harvard University in 2011, Fujimoto sets up a comparison between the nest and the cave, as two fundamentally different ways of living concepts. Whereas the nest represents safety, conformity and predictability, a space designed for people, the cave on the other side represents the unknown, a naturally shaped space, not designed for the purpose of living. It can be uncomfortable to enter the dark cave but spending time inside one can gradually start to adapt to the space. By rethinking our concept of space and the relation between space and human body we will eventually discover different functionalities within the cave and innovate new functions in the already designed space. 

(…)A grid system with 36 pitches was the starting point of the composing process. Imagining the grid as a cave, I made 3 different paths through the grid as if I was exploring the cave. These three melodies became the outline for this composition. On ‘Disruption, disjunction, deconstruction’ the musicians are exploring the 36 pitches independently, as if, quoting Fujimoto; finding their own small favourite comfortable places inside the natural cave(…)

Martin Taxt: disruption, disjunction, deconstruction from Second Room

Release date: 27.05.2022 (CD/DD) 05.08.2022 (LP)

In their new composition, Swagger, Oslo-based vocal duo Propan augment their customary sound palate with the aid of an eight-strong ensemble of strings, winds, percussion, voices, and electronics - an ensemble by the name Propanions. Combining pre-scored and improvised content, Swagger moves between the soft sound of tuning forks, odd beats, curious text, playful melodies and textural noise, resulting in an eccentric piece of definite character - an eclectic manifestation of the duo’s electroacoustic universe.

SWAGGER was commissioned in 2016 by Femme Brutal, a feminist booking and DJ collective. It received its world premiere at Oslo’s Parkteater, as part of the 2016 Femme Brutal Festival. The original score included choreographic movements performed live by musicians and a detailed lighting design.

Propan was founded in 2011 by vocalists Ina Sagstuen and Natali Abrahamsen Garner. They have toured widely throughout the world, including Japan, Australia, USA, Europe. Swagger is their fourth release, following Baby (Va Fongool 2016), Trending (SOFA 2019) and Loom (GLARC 2022).

Propan: B2 from Swagger

Title: mind is moving (IV)
Artist: Michael Francis Duch
SOFA 591 (2LP/DD)
Release date: 27.05.2022

mind is moving (IV)

Two monks were arguing about a flag. One said: "The flag is moving."
The other said: "The wind is moving."
The sixth patriarch happened to be passing by. He told them: "Not the wind, not the flag; mind is moving."

mind is moving (IV) is part of a series of pieces composed by Michael Pisaro-Liu. It is a collection of 60 sounds for the contrabass, and any performance may include anywhere from 30 to all 60 sounds in the score, that may be played in any order. There is one sound per minute and all are played pizzicato and generally soft. After playing the sound the performer should hold her/his position for as long as possible before playing the next sound, allowing the sound to ring as long as possible. 

The Koan that inspired the title of this series gives us an idea how to approach this piece, both as a listener as well as well as a performer. What are we listening to: The bass, the decay of the sounds played or the background noise?  Sound is moving and we are observing the process of the birth and death (decay) of each sound and, of course, the empty space between each sound event. In Zen this is referred to as Ma.

Although being an early piece by Pisaro-Liu (1996), it is seldom performed and has yet been recorded. This recording took place in the Nidaros cathedral in Trondheim in August 2019. As mentioned, the piece itself has no narrative as such, as the sounds can be played in any order and half of them may be omitted. Yet, the performer creates a narrative when interpreting and playing it. 
There is also another possible narrative here to be listened to. The piece was recorded in one take around midnight, and by default an hour of sound was documented from inside the cathedral, telling a parallel story of its own.

Michael F. Duch / Michael Pisaro: mind is moving (iv) excerpt

Episode 1
Mattie Barbier: threads (SOFA 592)

The Los Angeles-based musician and composer Mattie Barbier recorded threads in The Tank Center for Sonic Arts, a seven-story steel water tank whose formidable resonance propelled Barbier down new avenues of sound. On the podcast’s debut episode, Mattie recounts close encounters with cowboys en route to the venue; the significance, in brass playing, of not obscuring the breath; and their love for dioramas, among other sundry subjects.  

Learn more about Mattie: https://mattiebarbier.com/

Hosted and edited by Jennifer Gersten
Produced by Barry Tan and Liza Yeager 
Thank you to Mattie, Ingar, Martin, and Kim 

SOFA Music, based in Oslo, Norway, is curated by musicians Ingar Zach, Martin Taxt, and Kim Myhr. 
sofamusic.no
sofamusic.bandcamp.com
instagram.com/sofalabel/

SOFA STORIES episode 1 - Mattie Barbier

EPISODE 2
Jan Martin Smørdal and Øystein Wyller Odden: Kraftbalanse (SOFA595)

On Kraftbalanse, the composer Jan Martin Smørdal and visual artist Øystein Wyller Odden join forces for a musical investigation of the “mains hum”: the generally inaudible sound of electricity, which, in Norway and most of the rest of the world, is maintained at a frequency of approximately 50 Hz. Gathered on nothing less than the SOFA office’s very own sofa, Jan Martin and Øystein discuss their fascination with this oft-unacknowledged hum, the intricacies of interdisciplinary collaboration, and the enigma of Norway’s public warning system. 

Learn more about Jan Martin: smordal.no. 
Learn more about Øystein: wyllerodden.com 

Hosted and edited by Jennifer Gersten
Produced by Joseph Bohigian
Thank you to Jan Martin, Øystein, Ingar, Martin, and Kim 

SOFA Music, based in Oslo, Norway, is curated by musicians Ingar Zach, Martin Taxt, and Kim Myhr. 
sofamusic.no
sofamusic.bandcamp.com
instagram.com/sofalabel/

SOFA STORIES episode 2 - Smørdal / Wyller Odden

Episode 3 
Ingar Zach: Musica Liquida 

Percussionist, composer, and SOFA Music co-founder Ingar Zach has spent years inquiring into the possibilities of what he calls the “vibrating drum”—the result of placing vibrating speakers against drum membranes. On Musica Liquida, Ingar documents his latest forays from this project by recording in Oslo’s famously resonant Emmanuel Vigeland museum. Ingar talks about stretching himself as an improviser, testing new ground in collaborative and solo work, and the process of recording mere steps from a 19th-century artist’s ashes. 

Learn more about Ingar: ingarzach.com

Hosted and edited by Jennifer Gersten
Produced by Joseph Bohigian 
Thank you to Ingar, Martin, and Kim 

SOFA Music, based in Oslo, Norway, is curated by musicians Ingar Zach, Martin Taxt, and Kim Myhr. 
sofamusic.no
sofamusic.bandcamp.com
instagram.com/sofalabel/

SOFA STORIES episode 3 - Ingar Zach

SOFA is proud to mark its 100th release with the stunningly beautiful double album Hereafter, a new major work from guitarist/composer Kim Myhr, written for the 15-piece Stavanger-based ensemble Kitchen Orchestra. 

“Hereafter can be seen as a meditation on mortality and transience”, Myhr explains. “It was written at a time where the prime minister of Norway told the country’s population that ‘you have to be prepared to lose someone dear to you’.  It was like taken out of Tarkovsky’s “Sacrifice”. This atmosphere set the tone for Hereafter, which was written in 2020. For me, this piece is about the acknowledging and acceptance of disaster”. 

During the months of composing the music, Myhr kept humming the song sung by Salamat Ali Khan in Satyajit Ray’s classic film “Jalsaghar”, in the scene where the son and wife of the main character dies in a storm. For Myhr, the song resonated with the mood of the moment and acted like an undercurrent for the making of Hereafter. “There is a haunting sadness to that song, but there’s also something very grounded about it. The way the singer looks straight at the protagonist. There is no escaping this. That was the feeling.”

Kim Myhr’s previous release “Sympathetic Magic” which was written the following year, was utopian and deliriously optimistic in character. In Hereafter, there is a strong gravitas, and the state of mind is centered.  “I think it’s one of my more eloquent and varied pieces. Even if the framework is grave, it goes through many different shades. And if the piece takes flight into more ecstatic territory, the music quickly retires back to more pensive ground”. The piece consists of two main parts, a bit like a morning and evening raga, where the first part is darker and second part is of a more uplifting character (the two sections are divided into smaller sections for listener’s convenience). 

Thus, sunrise and sunset, the sea and the shore, life and death, permeate the often-elegiac music on Hereafter, a stunning piece of music that ranks among Myhr’s best works yet. It is released as a gatefold double-LP, CD and DL, with a beautiful cover photo by Eleonore Huisse and art direction by Stephen O’Malley.

Kitchen Orchestra is a heterogenous ensemble based in Stavanger with musicians coming from different musical scenes, a perfect match for Kim Myhr’s music. The line-up includes drummers Ståle Birkeland and Dag Magnus Narvesen, Marius Munthe-Kaas on vibraphone, Øyvind Dale on organ and synthesizer, Johan Egdetveit on accordion, Signe Irene Time on vocals and cassette player, Dag Egil Njaa on laptop processing, two bass players John Lilja and Thomas Bang doubling on guitar as well as electric and double basses, string players Nils Erga and Jenni Witick, and horn players Arild Hoem, Petter Frost Fadnes, Gunhild Seim and Gaute Vikdal focusing primarily on the darker timbres with two baritone saxes, bass trombone and trumpet. Kim Myhr himself plays both 12- and 6-string electric guitars.

Bio 
Norwegian guitarist and composer Kim Myhr has been touring internationally since the early 2000s and has released several records under his own name. His album You | me (2017) was nominated to Nordic Music Prize, and received wide acclaim internationally. As a composer he has made music for Australian Art Orchestra, Canadian string quartet Quatuor Bozzini, Kitchen Orchestra and Trondheim Jazz Orchestra of Norway, and has collaborated with Jenny Hval (on the 2012 collaborative album “In The End His Voice Will Be The Sound Of Paper”, Tony Buck of The Necks (on the album “You | me”), Lasse Marhaug, Christian Wallumrød, poet Caroline Bergvall and many others. His last record Vesper with Australian Art Orchestra was nominated for a Norwegian Grammy in 2020 in the contemporary category. Hereafter is the ninth album under his own name.
“Kim Myhr is a master of slow-morphing rhythms and sun-dappled textures that seem to glow from the inside”. -       The Guardian

Kim Myhr & Kitchen Orchestra Hereafter VI

Kim Myhr & Kitchen Orchestra: Hereafter VII

Keith Rowe/John Tilbury - Enough still not to know (Part 2)

Martin Küchen: Lieber Heiland, laß uns sterben

Håvard Volden – guitar and tape-loop
Martin Taxt – microtonal tuba, electronics
Henrik Olsson – objects, friction, piezo

Muddersten - Private Pleasure 1

John Tilbury/Keith Rowe/Kjell Bjørgeengen: Sissel (excerpt)

Streifenjunko: Everything we touch is electric

This is the second track from the album Off the Coast, with release on SOFA March 1st 2019.

Nørstebø/Lercher/Rokseth: Inside Elements

Pip is a duo playing improvised and composed pieces of music, consisting of Torstein Lavik Larsen on trumpet and Fredrik Rasten on guitar. 
Long lasting, blending sounds with a basis in chord structures and harmony is an ever returning element in their music. 
Pip's music also emphasizes small variations in tonal colour, often applying just intonation, extended playing techniques and repeating musical patterns.
Sometimes they include electronic sounds, without leaving behind the core sound of guitar and trumpet as a point of departure.

The duo has existed since 2006, and since then explored many different musical approaches. 
A recuring theme of their exploration has been expansions of the duo instrumentarium, including 
electronics, multiple guitars and different electronic and acoustic keyboard instruments.

Pip released their first official release on the Portuguese label Creative Sources in 2016,
and they have toured in countries as Germany, Czech Republic, England and the Scandinavian countries.

The duo has also worked with artists from other disciplines. They collaborated with choreographer and contemporary dancer Marie Bergby Handeland on the piece Lyden av besluttsomhet, jeg tåler den ikke, which were premiered at the CODA festival in Oslo in 2013, and they have also worked together and performed with the Copenhagen-based live visuals duo of Freya Sif Hestnes and My Lambertsen, called Manuals.

Torstein and Fredrik also play together in the band Oker, with drummer Jan Martin Gismervik and bass player Adrian Fiskum Myhr, and in the quartet Volumes with Magda Mayas on prepared piano and Isak Hedtjärn on clarinet.

Release date: 27. September 2019

Pip: Possible Worlds (excerpt)

SOFA MUSIC is proud to welcome a new project on board. It’s Propan, a duo comprising the two Norwegian vocalists; Natali Garner and Ina Sagstuen. Propan’s new album, Trending will be released worldwide on September 6th, 2019. On their second album Propan continues its research within the frameworks of the song form and presents a psychedelic, and more delirious landscape than on its first, somewhat more electroacoustic album, BABY.
The duo explores the meeting point between improvised music and studio production, and builds the album around Propan's well-established expression. With beats, grooves, melodies and layers
of voices the duo presents improvised music in a new and different light on an album that sounds open, inspired and solid. Trending is a post-apocalyptic club album of sorts; a meeting with improvisation, fused with elements from soul, jazz, art & popular music. With the familiarness from popular music, the undiscovered in-the-moment moments of
improvisation, together with the open-mindedness from the art world - ‘Trending’ manages to balance the well-known and the unfamiliar, and becomes a piece of work one wishes to explore. A weave of concept - something old, something new, something appealing and communicative, which you don't know how to understand, but still draws you in. The starting point for the music is as always with Propan, two voices and active use of effects. In the encounter between the naked voice and the tasteful use of the effects, the duo creates an intimate yet open atmosphere. With this ability the music coincides the innermost inner / personal intimate, with the outer / general universe. Don’t miss out on this intriguing album !

Propan: Berlin Clubbing

SOFA MUSIC is very excited to have signed the extraordinary ensemble Dans les arbres. More than 150 concerts during the last 15 years of extensive touring in USA, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe, has given the ensemble an impressive reputation throughout the world. Their fourth album, “Volatil”, is documenting Dans les arbres for the first time in a live situation. The ensemble's previous albums; “Dans les arbres” (ECM, 2008), “Canopée” (ECM, 2012) and “Phosphorescence” (HUBRO, 2017) are all recordings made in a studio or on location. “Volatil” is an unedited live performance from Teatro San Leonardo in Bologna (Italy, 2018) - a recording that captures the work of the ensemble in its natural habitat. "Volatil" is a strikingly well-documented example of the quartet’s capacity to shape hour-long intense musical dramas. The listener will recognize this significant sound-world, which has been praised worldwide.

Dans les Arbres: Volatile (Excerpt)

An album and a building

From November 2019 to February 2020 Espen Sommer Eide is presenting his new sound exhibition ‘The Waves’ at Marres in Maastricht. The idea from the beginning was to make both a spatial album as well as material for the exhibition. 
In the year preceding the sound exhibition, Sommer Eide recorded the album with help of several artists and musicians, and with instruments that were especially designed for this project. The pieces cause a collective stream-of-consciousness that make the spaces, architecture, and history of the house tangible. Following the shadows of the musicians, the audience experience a musical journey that transports them from one room to the next. They hear sequences, melodies and rhythms where the voices and perspectives of the performers are multiplied and heard from many angles at once, as in an imaginary hall of sound mirrors. A music that highlight the building itself as container for possible worlds, unobserved, unoccupied by any particular subject.

Espen’s thoughts about The Waves
Growing up in a small town, like I did in Tromsø in northern Norway, you had few possibilities to have alternative music experiences live. The transformative experiences had to come from obscure records and copies of cassettes and mixtapes one by accident got hold of. Well, not completely by accident, but through a kind of underground network of music that existed at the time. Like David Grubbs writes in his essay ‘Records ruin the landscape’ there was often a shroud of mystery around these recordings – often the simple mystery of how someone actually could have released something so impenetrable and weird in the first place. The mystery could only be solved through repeated listening. Repetition becomes a central part of the listening. You don’t have to get everything the first time you hear it, like you have to while listening to a live improvisation for instance. Listening to an album at home or on headphones somewhere, you can choose your amount of concentrated attention. This is the unique strength of the recording, and of the album as a format. It creates a kind of diffuse listening that opens up for many alternative experiences in parallel, and that reaches beyond the work itself and is mixed with the daily activity and the memories of the listeners personal life.

Virginia Woolf’s novel The Waves is an important source of inspiration. The Bloomsbury group, inspired by philosophers like Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead, were interested in exploring the question what the world would be without humans, that is, without anybody seeing or hearing it. Stream of consciousness is important for me as a belief in multiple simultaneous perspectives, parallel stories and inner and outer monologues. You find in the circle around Woolf the immense influence of the new electromagnetic wave theories, that suggest that the world is one enormous entanglement of events and people. It was also a time where scientific experiments were inseparable from performative art works. Huge crowds would come to witness the scientist Helmholtz do an acoustic experiment with tuning forks transmitting sympathetic resonance. In The Waves, you don’t exactly know where the voices are coming from or who is speaking.

The text collage with quotes mostly from Woolf, and a few from Whitehead and Russel, is not here to convey a particular message, but to be the raw material for our improvisations and permutations. The sound of words constitutes a layer of meaning that surrounds us all the time. It creates small misunderstandings or "mis-hearings" and propels our conversations forward often without us being aware of it. This soundscape of language is to me like very old music. A band that has been on tour forever.

Espen Sommer Eide: Slaapkamer from upcoming album The Waves

Release January 31.

SOFA MUSIC starts its 20 years anniversary with a new release from the marvelous duo Christine Abdelnour/Magda Mayas – the setting sun is beautiful because of all it makes us lose (SOFA577). After their two previous albums, Teeming (Olof Bright 2010) and Myriad (Unsounds 2012) , SOFA MUSIC is very excited to welcome the duo in our catalogue. This is a recording from their concert at Ultima Festival in Oslo 2018. The result is this wonderful piece of music where one definitely is struck by their mutual understanding, listening and development of the musical discourse.  The music of Abdelnour  and Mayas moves as one organism and engages the listener with a constant flow of ideas and colors. 

SOFA MUSIC has been following the music of Christine Abdelnour  and Magda Maya both as a duo and individually with great interest for quite some time. Both of them have done significant research on their respective instruments and when you see them ‘live’ you realize that it’s maybe a lucky coinsidence that these two extraordinary musicians found eachother and decided to make music together. SOFA MUSIC highly recommends this new offering from Magda Mayas and Christine Abdelnour.

Abdelnour/Mayas: The Setting Sun Is Beautiful Because Of All It Makes Us Lose (excerpt)

Single release: 7. August 2020
Album release date: 28. August 2020

Heartbeat is the second single off of Lasse Passage’s upcoming album Sunwards, to be released on SOFA's new genre-free series Sofa Songs. It’s a light and up-tempo slow burner of a song - driven by Lasse’s shimmering fingerpicking and soft vocal lines. In a delicate arrangement with horns, synths, and quirky percussion layers, listening to ‘Heartbeat’ is like drifting into a dream state on a sunny day.
It is a story about falling in love and the delicate feelings before anything is settled; realizing that the other person is physically affecting your body, even the tempo of your heartbeat. Lasse Passage says about the song: “It was one of the first songs I had ready, and one which I initially thought could be the start of an album. We recorded the rhythm section in the studio, but later spent a lot of time doing overdubs, slowly building up layers, and headhunting musicians which we thought would bring the right elements to the production.”

In the remix we encounter a different side of Passage’s artistry - electronic music - which has long been a part of his live shows. Though Lasse have never been involved in the Oslo disco scene, we are wondering if it could be something with the air in our capital, because just months after moving his studio to Oslo this remix came along. We are happy and proud to be presenting both these sides of Lasse’s diverse and fine output on this release.

For more info on Lasse’s upcoming album ‘Sunwards’ go to:
www.sofamusic.no/index.php/album/sunwards

Lasse Passage: Heartbeat

Release: 4. September 2020

In 2015, Lemur started a collaboration with German pianist Reinhold Friedl. Friedl is the leader of the international ensemble Zeitkratzer, working at the intersection of improvisation and composition. In this respect, Friedl's experience and working method have much in common with the ideas and working methods Lemur uses. Not least through an interchange between work with large and small ensembles.

In collaboration with Reinhold Friedl, we focus on the use of extended playing techniques, form experiments and utilization of both the entire quintet (Lemur / Friedl) and the individual musicians put together in solo, duo, trio and quartet format. Alloy contains the result of this collaboration.

The title reflects on the meeting between two strong expressions, and between five musicians who together create a musical alloy of different input and ideas. In this way, we see the studio as a factory where different elements can blend together and create something new.


Bjørnar Habbestad, flutes
Hild Sofie Tafjord, horn
Lene Grenager, cello
Michael Duch, contrabass
Reinhold Friedl, piano

LEMUR + Reinhold Friedl: Component III

Release: 21. August 2020

SOFA is the home for one of the most interesting string duos in Norway, whichever genre. We are talking about Sheriffs of Nothingness, featuring Kari Rønnekleiv and Ole-Henrik Moe. They continue to impress and surprise us with their compelling music. Their fourth release on SOFA is a mature confirmation of profound interplay and musicmaking. 

An Autumn Night at the Crooked Forest is a sort of tribute to the oldest and most traditional place for afterthoughts, meditation and reflection: the fireplace. Be it a bonfire (as it was for the first, say, five million years), or an indoor fireplace, or, even a woodstove could do the works as the place for people to gather, to tell stories, to share thoughts, or, to just be. This art of just being around the fireplace is perhaps what this album is trying to be about: four improvised pieces, dedicated to different types of firewood, or how it burns and glooms. Consequently the music on this album is not really moving anywhere in particular, it just is, trying to emphasize the point in everyday life where you are not trying to move on, where one can allow oneself to just halt and let your thoughts move freely. This record is recorded in the middle of Krokskogen (west of Oslo), in an old cabin, and by a fireplace that was, in different ways, burning all the time. So, all the way, you can hear it crackle, gently. Don’t miss out on Sheriffs of Nothingsness latest achievement available on CD and DL.

Sheriffs of Nothingness: Muted birch-logs

Press release
Title: First room
Artist: Martin Taxt
SOFA 582 (CD/DD)
EAN: 7041880999803
Release date: 18th of September 2020.
First room is the debut solo album from microtonal tuba player and composer Martin Taxt. The album is the first in a series of works investigating possible relations between architecture and music. First room is a tribute to the Japanese tearoom and the tatami mat. The floor plan as shown on the cover has been used as a foundation for the musical score, performed by Inga Margrethe Aas on viola da gamba and double bass, and Martin Taxt on microtonal tuba and sine waves. The album is an intricate mix between a studio recording and a live performance, both recorded in the same room over two days. The live musicians are often shadowing the recorded material, and with subtle changes in pitch and timbre the combined sound of live and recorded sound create an ambiguous and
at times fragile sound. The performance included live video from visual artist Kjell Bjørgeengen. Video stills from the concert is printed in the attached booklet.

Martin Taxt: First Room (excerpt)

Vilde&Inga: How Forests Think VIII

Sofa Music is proud to present the solo debut album of Norwegian composer and sound artist Tine Surel Lange. 

Works for Listening 1-10 is a series of spatial electro-acoustic works developed at Notam (NO), MISC (LT), and EMS (SE). All the works are made in 5th order ambisonics but have been presented in many different formats- as in this stereo decoding of the works.

In Works for Listening, there is a strong focus on listening-aesthetics and our psychological categorization of sound. Surrounding sound environments are created with material taken from everyday life: organic sound sources reconstructed to varying degrees by tone, rhythm, timbre, and layers. The sonic material in Works for Listening appears physical and tactile, and often abstracted from their original state. 
As Tine Surel Lange expresses herself: With Works for Listening, I hope to create inspiration for increased listening experiences in life.

Tine Surel Lange: Muorjegarggu

Release date: 9. April 2021

Sofa Music continues to release Microtub’s unique research into the microtonal tuba. The music on Sonic Drift achieves an even greater depth and leaves the listener sucked in to the trio’s extraordinary complex band sound. 

Sonic Drift is Microtub’s fifth album since their debut in 2011. Whereas the first four albums were recorded shortly after the music was composed, the music for Sonic Drift evolved considerably through the process of playing live concerts throughout Europe. Initially developed in 2017 and 2018, the music was recorded in Studio Paradiso in Oslo shortly before the European-wide lockdown started in March 2020. 

The first track, Sonic Drift, was originally composed by Robin Hayward for the Bohemian Drips festival at the large water tower in Berlin in June 2018. Inspired by the exceptionally long reverb within the circular tower, the piece drifts and rotates through ‘neutral’ harmonies based on the 11th, 13th and 29th harmonics and subharmonics contained within the microtonal tuba tunings. 

The Pederson Concerto is the second track of the album and is a collective composition by Microtub. It uses multiples of the 7th and 11th partials to create detuned perfect fifths and fourths, along with the unusual flattened minor third ‘169:144’. The piece features Peder Simonsen oscillating through the various intervals and triggering the other two players. The backing track was also made by Peder, using the analog electronic sounds of a Moog synthesizer.

Microtub: The Pederson Concerto (extract)

SOFA is a Norwegian record label for experimental music run by musicians Martin Taxt, Ingar Zach and Kim Myhr.

SOFA

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