Shelter Press is happy to announce the release of Perceptual Geography, Thomas Ankersmit’s latest record. The music was created as a loosely structured piece for live performance in 2018-2019, commissioned by CTM in Berlin and Sonic Acts in Amsterdam, and premiered there on the GRM Acousmonium. The music is inspired by - and dedicated to - the pioneering research of American composer and installation artist Maryanne Amacher (1938-2009), and created entirely on the Serge Modular analog synthesizer.

Ankersmit and Amacher first met in New York in 2000, and kept in touch over the following years. Her concerts and installations left a deep impression on him. Amacher, being close to the Tcherepnin family, also first introduced Ankersmit to the Serge synthesizer, developed by Serge Tcherepnin in the 1970s.

In the piece, Ankersmit explores different “modes” of listening: not just which sounds are heard and when, but also how and where sounds are experienced (in the room, in the body, inside the head, far away, nearby). So-called otoacoustic emissions (sounds emanating from inside the head, generated by the ears themselves) play a prominent role. When turned up loud, the material moves beyond the loudspeakers and starts to trigger additional tones inside the listener’s head; tones that are not present in the recorded music. Cupping the ears with the hands and slight movements of the head also help to bring these tones to life. Maryanne Amacher was the first artist to systematically explore the musical use of these phenomena, often referring to them as “ear tones”.

The title is a reference to Amacher’s essay “Psychoacoustic Phenomena in Musical Composition: Some Features of a Perceptual Geography”, and despite the all-electronic instrumentation, a dramatic sense of landscape and environment often emerges. There are sparks of fire, howling wind, distant thunder, a swarm of bats disappearing into the distance. Ghostly, floating tones are contrasted with highly dynamic sounds darting around the listener, and large, heavy waves rolling in slowly. “Ear tone” stimuli weave in and out of these textures, emerging from them. Once or twice, the music seems to completely freeze in time, but a slight movement of the listener’s head reveals changes.

For each live performance, Ankersmit tunes his instrument to the resonant characteristics of the performance space, so that the sounds activate the structure, traveling through the architecture and setting it in motion.

The record is accompanied by an extensive conversation between Ankersmit and Serge Tcherepnin, creator of the Serge Modular and friend and collaborator of Amacher.

This is a digital-only release (CD and download) because the “ear tone” material can’t be adequately transferred to vinyl.

Please play loud and use speakers, not headphones. 
credits
releases March 19, 2021

Music: Thomas Ankersmit
Mastering: Kassian Troyer
Design: Bartolomé Sanson
Interview editing: Michelle Arrouas

THOMAS ANKERSMIT 'Perceptual Geography' (EXCERPT) (SP130)

Taken from the album 'Sky Dice / Mapping the Studio' released as LP and Digital

Marcus Schmickler 'Sky Dice / Mapping the Studio (excerpt)'  (EMEGO 296)

Following on from the 2016 Korea Undok Group compilation LP Penultimate Press is proud to release the follow up, Senescence. Covering material recorded in the last two and a half years, this new cd comprises 50% works previously available on private tiny run cassettes and 50% works made for an abandoned lp. Abandoned being a good word to use again here as this collection of barley-there trace element songs and decaying acoustic snapshots will leave the listener with a sensation not so dissimilar to the feeling abandonment conjures.

Please note there has been zero mastering on this release as we wanted it to sound as shit as possible.

Fixed Ending

Short excerpt from the upcoming album "Neutral Star" by The Pitch & Julia Reidy. LTD LP + Digital, September 22nd on Miasmah.

"The Pitch is a quartet made up of Boris Baltschun, Koen Nutters, Michael Thieke and Morten Joh. Founded in Berlin in 2009, they play a hypnotic form of structured improvisation full of acoustic exploration and electronic intervention. On Neutral Star, The Pitch are joined by Australian guitarist/composer extraordinaire Julia Reidy for a record of star gazing electro-acoustic jazz."

The Pitch & Julia Reidy - Endless ≠ Limitless (Excerpt)

night cruise

Sam Mallet could have pursued a career as a French literature professor in Paris, but decided his true calling was to remain in Australia, dedicate himself to his music and find the plateau; a word he used to describe the sensory worlds residing in music. Under the influence of Eno, Jon Hassell, Arvo Pärt, John Coltrane and Robert Fripp, Sam explored a wide variety of musical styles and put them to service soundtracking the time-based works of his peers. He crafted spatial ambience, somber jazz, and drum computer driven rockers for short films and experimental video works, television shows (including the original Australian Wilfred series), feature films and live theatre. The avant garde Anthill Theatre, known for its departure from conventional staging practices and having a keen eye for talent, enlisted Mallet to provide soundtracks for approximately 40 productions throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.

Sadly, Sam passed away in 2014. A crucial piece of his legacy is undoubtedly the body of work he produced during his life, and the archive of recorded works is vast and deep. Sam seemingly saved everything, from fragments to finished pieces; and often repurposed previously released tracks by collaging them into new pieces. He self-released a small number of cassettes and CDs from the mid 1980s onward, the contents of which were culled from soundtrack work and original pieces, but the majority of his music was experienced only within the ephemeral live performances.

Wetlands is the product of countless hours spent with this archive by Rowan Mason (Sanpo Disco/Recurring Dream) and Tony Remple (Musique Plastique), offering a dynamic survey of Sam’s work, and housed in a jacket evoking the minimal design and colour palette of his earliest cassette releases. Two selections of Sam Mallet’s music were featured on the compilation Midday Moon (also produced by Rowan), released last year by Bedroom Suck Records. Along with Left Ear Records’ Antipodean Anomalies, Midday Moon has served to highlight outlier musics and scenes from Australia and New Zealand, and Wetlands plunges deeper into the catalog of this obscure yet groundbreaking artist.

Release by Musique Plastique / Recurring Dream

PRE-ORDER HERE: www.seance-centre.com/other-releases…allet-wetlands

For EU distribution contact: info@rushhour.nl
For NA distribution contact: info@seance-centre.com

Release date October 11th 2019

Wetlands

Sam Mallet - Wetlands (MP006/RD01)

"Beside Myself" is the second full-length release from Canadian sound artist crys cole. Known to many through her extensive collaborative practice with artists such as Oren Ambarchi, Leif Elggren, and James Rushford, in her solo work cole uses contact microphones, voice, simple electronics, and field recordings to create sonic environments that linger uneasily at the threshold of perception. Demonstrating how cole's work has developed and deepened since the relative austerity of her first solo LP "Sand/Layna," Beside Myself offers two lushly immersive side-long pieces that explore ideas of compositional drift. 'The Nonsuch' is inspired by the aural hallucinations experienced in the hypnagogic state during the onset of sleep. Opening with scratching contact mic textures and unintelligible vocal murmurs, the piece threads together live and studio performances with field recordings of urban environments to create a texture that is at once seemingly consistent and marked by constant transitions. Individual elements rise up from the background thrum only to disappear just as we become conscious of them; heterogenous sounds and spaces succeed one another with the unassailable logic of dreams. 'In Praise of Blandness (Chapter IX)' also focuses on drift and transition, but in a much more single-minded way. Over a rich, slowly-evolving organ drone, cole reads a passage from the French sinologist François Julien's book In Praise of Blandness (1991) exploring the concept of 'blandness' in the Taoist aesthetics of sound. Beginning crisp and clear, cole's voice becomes gradually less distinct over the course of the piece, the spoken words blurred by resonant frequencies à la Lucier's I Am Sitting in a Room until we are left with only the rhythm of incomprehensible speech. The text that cole reads acts a perfect description of her aesthetic project: 'We hear it still, but just barely, and as it diminishes it makes all the more audible that soundless beyond into which it is about to extinguish itself. We are listening then, to its extinction, to its return to that great undifferentiated matrix'." --Francis Plagne (November, 2019). LP/Digital available 02/21/20 via studentsofdecay.com

In Praise of Blandness (Chapter IX)

“Mine is the Heron” is the new Tom James Scott record, the first document of his solo work since 2017. Over the past decade, the UK-based composer has released a diverse body of recordings via labels such as Bo’Weavil, Carnivals, Where To Now?, and his own impeccably curated Skire imprint.

This album finds Scott in half-remembered, sanguine moods, some of which are likely to remind listeners of his collaborative work with Andrew Chalk. Fragile acoustic piano runs are meted out with painterly finger strokes, buoyed by subtle, idiosyncratic FM sound design, chimes, and guitar. Culled from recordings composed and put to tape over the past several years, the collection has the feel of a poet's selected works, or perhaps more appropriately, a compendium of letters - exquisite vignettes that feel simultaneously private and important to disseminate into world. The hermetic nature of this quietly stunning music is evocative of abandoned shingle beaches and misty marshes, and of the Virginia Woolfe novel from which the album takes its title: “Mine is the heron that stretches its vast wings lazily; and the cow that creaks as it pushes one foot before another munching; and the wild, swooping swallow; and the faint red in the sky, and the green when the red fades; the silence and the bell; the call of the man fetching cart-horses from the fields - all are mine.”

Recorded by Tom James Scott on Walney Island, 2016 - 2019
Mastered by Kassian Troyer at Dubplates & Mastering

LP/Digital available 06/05/20 via studentsofdecay.com

Another Twilight

from the "Earth Mirage" CS (NNF370)
Not Not Fun / 2021

EARTH DAY:
https://dravier.bandcamp.com/album/earth-mirage
https://midheaven.com/item/earth-mirage-by-dravier

Dravier "Palm Dance"

Butterfly Tongues More Ancient Than Flowers

Taken from A Young Person's Guide To The Early Welttraumforscher. Out March 1 on tape and available now to download and stream in full: https://acolourfulstorm.bandcamp.com/album/a-young-persons-guide-to-the-early-welttraumforscher

A Young Person's Guide To The Early Welttraumforscher

Die Welttraumforscher - Darktown (Lied)

Record label operating out of Cincinnati, OH. Active since 2005, Students of Decay publishes drone, ambient, musique concrete, and minimalist musics. Distributed by Morr.

In Praise of Blandness (Chapter IX)

Students of Decay

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