I love these sound spaces that you open so slowly, so beautifully!

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

In this episode of Talking Experiments, host Jennifer Torrence and artist Espen Sommer Eide go deep into Espen’s new work The Waves, which will premiere at Borealis 2022. He discusses how The Waves explores some of the key ideas returning again and again in his work: language and music, building instruments, the form of the album, improvisation, collaboration, and presence and absence.

Espen Sommer Eide’s The Waves, runs from 16-20 March 2022 at Christinegaard Hovedgaard in Bergen, Norway.

Talking Experiments is hosted by Jennifer Torrence and produced by Borealis – a festival for experimental music

Talking Experiments with Espen Sommer Eide

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

“Gifting Senselessly In Endless Lavishness” is the second single out from Kim Myhr’s upcoming album “Sympathetic Magic”, an ecstatic, delirious, and deeply touching piece of music; a towering new work in Kim Myhr’s increasingly substantial output as an artist and composer. 

“Gifting Senselessly In Endless Lavishness” is a title taken from a book by Bojana Kunst. The music is very generous, almost indulgent. The first thing I wrote on the piece was the organ intro, I wanted to make something ecstatic and soulful, and the rest of the song flowed naturally into different sections. Working with an RnB drum beat like that was a first for me. It’s a very grounded quality that gives a good contrast to the undulating waves of 12-string guitar harmonics.” - Kim Myhr

Gifting Senselessly In Endless Lavishness

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Kim Myhr: "Gifting Senselessly In Endless Lavishness" from upcoming "Sympathetic Magic"

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 & Lasse Marhaug - 31.5.17 [excerpt]

Kim Myhr & Kitchen Orchestra: Hereafter VII

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 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.

Pip: Possible Worlds (excerpt)

SOFA

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