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symphonic

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

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<p>Excerpt from the album, available from <a href="http://www.soundohm.com/product/Werner-DURAND-/Hemispheres/pid/21962/">soundohm.com</a>. Going back to his early musical inspirations in the early seventies, Werner Durand was fascinated with the multiple saxophone sounds coming from Terry Riley´s Poppy Nogood and Happy Ending, Dickie Landry´s Fifteen Saxophones and Ariel Kalma´s Reternelle. His particpation in the Parisian saxophone ensemble Urban Sax in 1976/77 became a starting point for his own musical endeavours. The 2 saxophone pieces presented  here were composed  and recorded roughly 10 years apart and document his move from free microtonality towards Just Intonation,  to which he was turned on to as a member of Arnold Dreyblatt and the Orchestra of Excited Strings from 1990 to 1997.

The 2 Hemispheres represent the 2 parts of the brain, associated with the intuitive (right) and rational (left) part. Right Hemsiphere for soprano sax  was composed in 1990 for a festival in Berlin, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the invention of the saxophone.  The main idea for this piece was to make one forget what instrument one is listening to as well as to  feature various unorthodox techniques like loose embouchure, false fingerings or  circular breathing and a „free“ microtonaltiy.  It was  inspired by certain composers of microtonal music like Giacinto Scelsi, Phill Niblock ,LoisV.Vierk and Mary Jane Leach. The original version of Left Hemisphere was developed between 1995 and 2000.
„Dreaming“ of  a certain ratio and intervals during a summer holiday in England in 1995, the piece slowly evolved over the next years. This version was recorded in 2000. The piece uses just intervals derived from the 3rd and 7th harmonics played over a sax drone. A later version for 2 tenor saxes was performed by Durand and Ulrich Krieger as part of the Just Intonation Sax Quartet  named  The Beatless Saxodrones, which existed between 2001 and 2003 in Berlin. Other pieces  in their program were by James Tenney, Chiyoko Szlavnics and Ulrich Krieger. All music composed, performed, recorded and mixed by Werner Durand.
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WERNER DURAND Left Hemisphere

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

exploring tone with a manipulated loop and two oscillators into the verbos amp & tone controller. a wonderful filter/vca module capable of this vintage, saturated sound.

can't believe it's been so many days since i've been creative in the studio. time happens.

nov 06, 2014 (a worn tangle)

JOAO LOBO - NOWRUZ
CD, LP & digital: https://wearethreefour.bandcamp.com/album/nowruz

Nowruz refers to the Iranian New Year that happens every year on march 21st. It is a Persian compound word that we can literaly translate "new day". For João Lobo, Nowruz could mean new start. It is his very first solo record after more than 40 albums as sideman or co-leader. The idea of doing a solo record has been growing up in his mind for over 10 years, before he started to play solo shows.

João Lobo solo project explores many of the countless sound possibilities of a drumset. The departure point is simple ideas developed in improvisations in the form of songs, using only unamplified acoustic elements without any edits or overdubs. The name of the songs are very personal and some of them pay homages to people he admires. For example ‘Babkou’ is the Gnawa name that Maalem Hassan Zoghari gave him. ‘Tom’ and ‘Zé’ are an obvious tribute to Tom Zé that influenced him for the song format and ‘Oren’ refers to Oren Ambarchi for his genius in the sound processing.

Nowruz

João Lobo - Bakbou

'Dawning On' is Australian, Berlin-based guitarist Julia Reidy’s Slip debut: a razor-sharp précis of pent-up, blazing melancholy on a lone 12-string guitar.

Reidy’s playing is lucid and poised, teasing out elegant inflections from half-melodies, rugged strums, and curious tunings. Her compositions are lingering streams: barely-shackled attacks give way to introspective arpeggiations before resurging again, all spurred on by a yearning, nervous energy. 

With the album’s single-track A-side clocking in at just under half-an-hour, this is by some measure Julia’s most comprehensive solo statement to date, and a luxurious listen which revels in the 12-string’s generous resonance. For our money, it’s up there with the finest work of her fellow Aussies The Necks, Anthony Pateras, and Jon Rose. 

'Dawning On' [SLP033] is available on red C65 tape or CD, with download. It comes packaged with a double-sided fold-out A3 poster with artwork by Suze Whaites. Recorded by Owen Roberts and Giulherme Fill. Mastered by Joe Talia. Tapes dubbed by Klaas Hübner. 

@juliareidy
www.julia-reidy.com

Dawning On [SLP033] - Julia Reidy
Released: February 2017

Upwelling - Julia Reidy

Visible Cloaks - Neume (ft. Matt Carlson)

Learn more at RVNG: http://smarturl.it/rvngnl37-rvng
Add to your collection at Bandcamp: http://smarturl.it/rvngnl37-bcamp
Download + stream everywhere else here: http://smarturl.it/rvngnl37-digi

Video by Brenna Murphy. From Reassemblage

©2017 RVNG Intl. / http://igetrvng.com

Reassemblage (RVNGNL37 - Promo)

Visible Cloaks - Neume (ft. Matt Carlson)

Taken from the album Kevätjuhla released March 17th. 

Order here: https://tomutonttu-alter.bandcamp.com/album/keva-tjuhla

Tomutonttu - Hiukkasen Tahtiin (ALT30)

Philippe Lauzier - On the window side

Performed by Elisabeth Smalt. 
Released on the CD Subvoice - unsounds.com/shop/physical/subvoice

Music For Viola

Jared Sagar — Night Thoughts (F90121)

INFO
Format: digital
Duration: 30’50’’ 
Catalog: F90121
Release Date: September 4, 2017

TRACK LISTING:
1. Night Thoughts #1
2. Night Thoughts #2 

"Night Thoughts was conceived in early 2017. I set out to make this work a little dark, somewhat atmospheric and ghostlike, focusing on isolation, hoping the listener would immerse themselves into this piece and lose their surroundings. There are ambient moments, drone type moments and micro sounds coming and going, weaving in and out. The majority of the sound was originally field recordings, which were then played around with, transformed to establish new images within the mind". 

—

ared Sagar is a British composer of experimental music, working in genres of micro sound, granular synthesis, abstract, minimalism, ambience and drone. His work involves an exploration of sound itself whether natural or synthetic. His method of working is mostly taking samples, field recordings etc, and manipulating them beyond all recognition, therefore creating something new, abstract and different. 
Most pieces are minimal, the sounds evolving, growing with stillness and intensity. He has been experimenting for a number of years with the manipulation of sound and what can be achieved by it. 
He has released material on labels such as Sonospace, Unfathomless, Seattle Dott Recs, Phonographic, Murmur Intemporel and others. 

https://soundcloud.com/jaredsagar

Night Thoughts

Jared Sagar — Night Thoughts #2 (excerpt)

5th part of cyril scheer’s variations on "Annie Laurie" (old Scottish song) written for The Same Ensemble.

Annie Laurie (cyril scheer’s variations)

condition: (as determined by the eighth <a href="http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto">junto</a> project) you will select a single sentence (or extended, self-contained clause) from <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20203/20203-h/20203-h.htm#XI">chapter 11 in the autobiography of benjamin franklin</a>. you will use that recording as the sole audio source material in your work. at some point, the sentence/clause must be comprehensible to the listener. you will not add any other sounds. duration must be between two and five minutes.

process: selected sentence was read by kara andree and recorded to a dictaphone. the dictaphone was then used for live play back which was processed using electronics and layered on a pair of modified reel to reel recorders with closed tape loops.  

http://www.davidandree.com/blog/?p=1593

at a great distance (disquiet0008-voice)

performed by symphony orchestra of the moscow state theatre named after natalia sats, conductor sergej mikheev. 
14.06.2018

my lovely dear machine

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