New Experimenta

That is the only god I could imagine believing in, a god whose passion is not redemption, who saves nothing, fulfils no purpose--a god who simply is.” 
― Stanisław Lem, Solaris

Back in the early seventies, Edward Artemiev created a wonderful and prophetic soundtrack for Andrei Tarkovsky’s cinema adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s book Solaris, a study of the clash between faith and science presented as a sci-fi story of astronauts who encounter a mystical and superior intelligence which exists as an ocean on a distant planet. The soundtrack, as well as Artemiev’s own extended adaptations of it, and his music for Stalker and The Mirror have recently been re-released on vinyl by Russian collectors’ label MiruMir. These synthesised ambient works, far ahead of their time, should be heard anyone who loves or has any interest in ambient music.

For me, the outstanding feature of the Solaris soundtrack was the repeated and varied use of J.S. Bach’s sublime chorale prelude BWV 639, “Ich ruf' zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ” from the Little Organ Book. I became obsessed with it, collecting and compiling different versions, especially Isao Tomita’s wonderful adaptations, also inspired by the film.

As a tribute to all of the above creative masters, this is my offering to one of the great directors, one of the great authors and two of the great composers. If it is too long, that is because I am still obsessed with it.

Candles on his altar

6. Jan Garbarek - Evening Land

Processed Field Recordings, Elen´s Spoken Word & A Yamaha Synth.

Original Production For Choses Contraires On Radio LYL.

Exclusive Piece For Choses Contraires, With Elen Huynh On Radio LYL

Sugai Ken - Wochikaeri to Uzume

Learn more at RVNG: http://smarturl.it/rvngnl40-rvng
Add to your collection at Bandcamp: http://smarturl.it/rvngnl40-bcamp

©2017 RVNG Intl. / igetrvng.com

UkabazUmorezU (RVNGNL40 - 320 - Promo)

Sugai Ken - Wochikaeri to Uzume

We release Phil Strucks album NNO on February 23.

Phil is a experimental recording artist, who also works as a photographer, documenting the contemporary, experimental electronic music scene and life around it. His music is based on sampling from odd sound sources, random data streams and the usage of microphones and various synthesizer. Phil ennobles the trivial, honors the silence and creates an experimental collection of raw textural ambiance. It could’ve been a matter of trompe-l’oeil, a mere juxtaposition of audio signs to mimic functionality, but there’s a much more vibrant and fluid quality to his mind-expanding pieces. He is living in Hamburg, Germany.

Text: Baptiste Girou (Inverted Audio)

Phil Struck - Brook

Peter Strickmann is an artist performing, installing and manipulating sounding activity in public and domestic environments. While collaborating with various improvising musical groups or noise-makers and exhibiting in a variety of contexts, he generally observes the behaviour of sound and the habits of listening in diverse routine-settings or extra-ordinary circumstances.

"Mellow Toes comes as the second excerpt from my Schnarcharchiv (snoring-collection). This growing collection contains audio-recordings of sleeping humans, friends, and animals in all places and states of rest, sleep and nap, captured during night- and daytime since 2009. It all started during my daily afternoon-naps when I observed my own body getting hyper-sound-sensitive on its way to sleep. In these situations my chest, my arms, my toes turned out to become my biggest ears. It made me search for ways to share and reproduce these hallucinatory and enjoyable states of awake fatigue and airy interspace. Now, the two compositions on Mellow Toes are an attempt to do so. They contain parts of the snoring material that I collected during the last eight years, aswell as some sounds of my prepared objects instruments. The instruments noise may appear as the cheeping bird outdoors that pokes your sleepy mellow toe. All the snoring and sleeping rhythms here, they may help this bird to have a much stronger voice then commonly known." - Peter Strickmann

PeterStrickmann - MellowToes (side a)

Niskogradba - Hospital Visit, October 2013 is taken from "Lies, Deception and Sin" 

Release date: 18.10.2018
Format: CD/Digital
All tracks sampled, looped and produced by Niskogradba 
between November 2017-March 2018 
Mastered by Roel Weerdenburg

Limited edition of 40, Professionally manufactured high quality CDr's, Handmade packages, hand numbered.
Different colored wallets with envelopes: Brown Kraft, Blue and Red.
Bigger and smaller sleeves, smallest size in transparant bag.
Photo's. 

Order:
https://shimmeringmoodsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/lies-deception-and-sin

For fans of The Caretaker, William Basinski

Niskogradba - Hospital Visit, October 2013

Moon Wheel — རྡོ་རྗེ་རྣལ་འབྱོར་མ་

Order OHER PEPLE'S CRIMES: www.anaott.bandcamp.com/album/other-peoples-crimes

After ‘Cobraxine’, ‘Boogie Throb’, and the Ana Ott – released ‘Molochville’, Brecht Ameel (Razen/Ameel Brecht) gives us his new album under the Br’lâaB moniker ‘Other People’s Crimes’; a high-on-paranoia, pre-crime-surveillance narrative, constructed after hours in the studio from a combination of Ameel’s own recordings on a widely varied set of instruments, library music, flea-market broken vinyls and old cassettes. Part blind-overdub palimpsest-collage, part straightforward composition, the 10” contains both Br’lâaB’s loop constructions and tracks performed by the found audio phantom band called the Acid Boogie Quartet. Bearing more gritty layers of both sound and subtext than ever, the “Other People’s Crimes” EP stands as an artefact of wild paranoia and spy-thriller sonics, weaving vignettes of surveillance gone wrong, doublethink and confessional echolalia.

Police and thieves are in the streets, running wild with nosebleeds and ill will ids. Dial v for victim as the night horizon broods a neon luminol glow. Howling at the vortex, buried under blindfolds, vigilantes take to crime with fear and ketamines.

Other People's Crimes

Br'lâaB - Dial V for Victim

Anna Homler & The Pylon King (Voices Of Kwahn) – Almost Beautiful

On March 2, 2018, Transport tore down the Beursschouwburg in Brussels. Luckily, this documentation exists.

Releases on cassette and digital on May 3rd via Ana Ott. Pre-order at www.anaott.bandcamp.com.

Transport are Nils Herzogenrath (Bass), Edis Ludwig (Computer) and Niklas Wandt (Drums). Guests: Elisa Kühnl (flute, vocals), Joshua Gottmanns (percussions) and Sebastian von der Heide (percussions).

Live at Kraak Festival

Transport - Live at Kraak Festival (excerpt)

The Sacrificial Code

Kali Malone - Litanic Cloth Wrung (from "The Sacrificial Code" iDEAL 2xLP/3xCD)

FUJI||||||||||TA, iki, LP

Release date - April 3th 2020
Catalogue nr. - HG2003
Format - Ltd. Vinyl/digital

https://hallowground.bandcamp.com

Credits:
All music composed, played and Recorded by FUJI|||||||||||TA
Mixed by Makoto Oshiro
Mastering by Lawrence English at Negative Space

Tracklist:
1) keshiki (09:42)
2) nNami (09:20)
3) osoi (10:12)
4) sukima (07:03)

///
"FUJI|||||||||||TA has created a work that operates as a beautiful nexus between the material and immaterial qualities of music. 
It is a lived-in dreamscape of deep, rich tonality. A remarkable debut."
(Lawrence English)

///
FUJI||||||||||TA, real name FUJITA Yosuke, is a Japanese sound artist. After countless performances in different contexts either solo or along artists such as Yamantaka Eye of Boredoms and the legendary avant-gardist SUZUKI Akio as well as a slew of solo releases, his LP »iki« (»breath«) for the Swiss-based Hallow Ground label is his first in nine years. On these four pieces, Fujita explores the idiosyncratic sound qualities of the pipe organ he has built all by himself in 2009. This - quite literally unique - instrument features only eleven pipes, an air pump called »fuigo« which was modelled after a traditional blacksmith’s one and has no keyboard. Inspired by traditional gagaku, it was designed to evoke rich landscapes rather function as just another musical instrument. While his previous records saw FUJI||||||||||TA explore various modes of abstraction, »iki« is a highly emotive yet meditative album, musically restrained but full of imagination.

»keshiki« immediately sets the mood for this record with a long sustained note that is punctuated by the soft clicking of Fujita’s air pump. Once Fujita carefully starts bringing melodies into play, the interplay of the drone and the discrete rhythmic element gives way to a fuller harmonic whole. »keshiki« is an intimate piece that perfectly displays the artist’s knack for painting a rich sonic picture with only a reduced palette. »nNami« juxtaposes the sounds of two pipes that are out of tune with each other, creating a hypnotic sensation of ebb and flow (»nami« translates to »wave«) that is full of subtle friction. It’s a staggering artistic interpretation of the instrument’s material characteristics. Clocking in at ten minutes, »osoi« (»slow«) is an overall melancholic piece that explores the relationship between different tone colours through minute changes in pace. Finally, »sukima« (»blank space«) is the shortest and the most rhythmic piece of the four. Composed of only staccati, it is a masterful exploration of the harmonic qualities Fujita’s stunning pipe organ has to offer.

Recorded between September and December of 2019, »iki« marks the culmination of FUJI||||||||||TA’s ten-year-long work with the instrument that he had built without any prior knowledge and started to teach himself to play without a manual in sight. It is, in other words, the unique result of a unique musical mind paying his dues to the uniqueness of his own creation; introspective and welcoming at once.

FUJI||||||||||TA - osoi (HG2003)

Félicia Atkinson
Everything Evaporate
SP121
Shelter Press

Out April 3rd, 2020

—

Everything Evaporate

There is that instance, when you are passing over a threshold, where the before and after fall away and it is only the threshold itself that you are existing within - that neutral space of the in-between, of the transition, that becomes the actual lived-in moment. It is through fully occupying and being present in that transitional space that we are able to access new perspectives that allow for a reassessment of things previously thought understood. The five tracks that make up Everything Evaporate feel like a sustained moment of focus during a period of transition; a longer breath taken in that actual lived-in moment.

You find in the paintings of Helen Frankenthaler, when two colors meet, a bleed that washes out the boarder; a porousness that feels like a fleeting but significant transitory event. The idea of a “crossing” comes to mind - the willingness to extend oneself from one place out towards another. For Atkinson this willingness manifests through language and through the inventing of new stories as a method of reaching across and creating the possibilities for connection.

Spectral drones, gongs, bells, pianos and marimbas accompany Atkinson’s voice, but now we also find laconic pitch-shifted conversationalists and digitally harmonized chanteuses joining in. As mesmerizing as the narrators voice is at the center of these tracks, it is the addition of other voices that produces the heteroglossic complexities. These are the voices that most often morph into pure sonic materiality; they exist just under the surface of the music creating texture and rhythm while occasionally pushing their way into the foreground with abstracted extrapolations. And it is through the summing of these many voices that a fractal image emerges, at once both singular and plural.

Everything Evaporate was produced after a year of travel and shows. It is, in a sense, a reassessed document of public performance with improvised studio interventions acting to break the linear stream of the live-on-stage temporality. There is a resonance between these in-studio improvisations of Atkinson’s and Frankenthaler’s paint pores: Before executing the performative action materials are considers, processes are devised and then, with fluid gesture, the event happens. In Everything Evaporate it is through a trust in materials, process and gesture that new melodies and language become available and new narratives pool and find form.

There are many moments within these piece that hint at the sensation of falling asleep while reading a novel - the stories, images and characters follow you into your unconscious but also wait for you on the page; you walk a liminal edge and wander that threshold of consciousness where the book and your imagination become intertwined. As this threshold is crossed your understanding of what has been given to you and what you have created for yourself is obscured, a new space opens up and new stories are revealed.

- words by Ben Vida.

Everything Evaporate

Félicia Atkinson 'Everything Evaporate' (SP121)

If There Is No Where by Felicia Atkinson

Schleswig-Holstein is a thin land bridge between the mighty hull of the North German lowlands and the long pointed head of the Jutland peninsula, with the gentle Baltic Sea on one side, and the rough North Sea on the other. Numerous lakes, deciduous forests and wide corridors have shaped this region since its formation during the last ice age. The varied landscape, covered with fertile clay and littered with countless large and small granite blocks, is the legacy of the glaciers.

Fascinated by the cultural and geographical history of his homeland, Phil Struck recorded sonic impressions after hikes, wanderings, daydreams, historical readings and childhood memories. Schleswig-Holstein Aufnahmen is the distillation of these diaristic recordings, made between 2017 and 2019, using a sampler, synthesizer, and worn flea market records. Much like the cyclical musings of W.G. Sebald, or Cluster’s pastoral electronic miniatures, these works are intrinsically tied to the landscape of which they were born. The wobble and crackle of the samples is evocative of the craggy scenery of the lowlands, and also describes the patinated atmosphere of memory, found in the work of Vladislav Delay, Pole, Caretaker, Philip Jeck, Ken Jacobs, and Bill Morrison. The painting adorning the album cover was done by Struck’s great grandfather who was also seduced by this meandering windswept land.

Limited edition of 100 LPs with risograph printed artwork.

Tracklist:

A1 Horizonte (Intro) (2:12) 
A2 Baizubai (5:41) 
A3 Speckenbeck (2:05) 
A4 Grube (7:00) 
A5 Feuermachen (2:52) 
A6 Weiher (3:30)  

B1 Sommertage (6:45) 
B2 Wogen (11:24) 
B3 Jens (3:49)

Buy Limited Edition LP: https://www.seance-centre.com/shop/phil-struck-schleswig-holstein-aufnahmen

Buy Digital: https://philstruck.bandcamp.com/album/schleswig-holstein-aufnahmen

Phil Struck - Baizubai (21SC)

Etrusca 3D is a new band that merges two current Audio and visual artists from the 21st Century, Francesco Cavaliere and Spencer Clark.

The album is the first to be released by Spencer Clark's label Pacific City Discs, as a subsidiary and in collaboration with Discrepant.

Etrusca 3D is the juxtaposition of two imagineers friendship, as Francesco says, 'because I am Etruscan and you (Spencer) are 3D." There is a piece of the future of Etruscan civilization contained within this disc. It is with Spencer's remote viewing of a past and future creative culture and Francesco's birthright that we find a true insinuation of civilizations world body.

We decided to invoke various Etruscan deities or spirits by sampling Francesco's voice uttering their name. We put them inside the Emax 2 3D machine and we began to play these deities and thus incorporate a fresh and ancient music language to present the 21st Century Etruscan experience. In the meantime, these musical stories turned into Francesco's imaginary storytelling style to further present a narrated record of the intuited activities of Etruscan Gods...’’

‘’One cannot underestimate the result of stating the names of certain gods at high voices. Something that sinuous and quiet enters into this disc for you to listen. What if the Etruscan Civilization instead of transforming or amalgamating into the roman one, was instead passed on to other worlds? Were the tombs, their spiral idols and funeral decorations a meticulous method for transmuting to something else?”
- Francesco Cavaliere & Spencer Clark 


Music by Francesco Cavaliere and Spencer Clark as Etrusca 3D
Story by Francesco Cavaliere

Vecu

È una profeta, la profeta del mondo Etrusco, non puoi raffigurare la sua immagine. Il suo sguardo in trasparenza si nota dietro una barra marmorea che nasconde delle venature impossibili, probabilmente aliene. Vecu è la sola e unica abile a trasferire le parole della creazione dei mondi più alti e più profondi. Curva la realtà negli sguardi degli animali. Il sottosuolo non è scuro non è sabbia bagnata che goccia creando torri. Il sotto suolo è un terreno d’oro coperto da trasparenti cristallini involucri. Delle energie forano il pensiero e le radici strette lo conservano nel corso dei secoli. Non pensate di sbarazzarvi di lei. Vecu vive dietro gli occhi di colui che non sa di esserlo. Sta già cambiando il fuoco col suo sguardo. Nessun vampirismo. Solo un sorriso che non fa ridere ma che annuisce allo sguardo di Dio. Oltre le ciglia del tempo è la personificazione del destino celeste.

Etrusca 3D

Etrusca 3D - Veive (from Etrusca 3D)

Ancient Indonesian tradition meets doom metal in profoundly Ur ways on Stephen O’Malley and Senyawa’s collaborative commission for choreographer Gisèle Vienne, highly recommended if you’re into Sunn O))), Keiji Haino, Nazoranai, Phurpa, KTL.

Following a decade of creative bonds forged between theatre director and choreographer Gisèle Vienne and doom sayer Stephen O’Malley that spans multiple soundtracks (solo and with Peter Rehberg in KTL) and visual artworks, the pair travelled to Indonesia on a commission to explore the country’s rich culture in 2018. They immersed in a magical world of performative rituals where they encountered Wukir Suryadi, an experimental musician and instrument builder whose acclaimed releases both solo and as half of Senyawa have invigorated the avant and experimental rock scene over the past decade. 

The six tracks of ’Bimi Sakti’ document groundbreaking ventures between Senyawa and O’Malley, yielding an incredibly powerful mix of electric guitar and bass guitar amp worship blended with the remarkable range of tonalities from Senyawa’s custom-built bambuwukir, plus traditional pipes and possessed vocals. Practically without precedent in the modern musical sphere, the 44’ release speaks to a resounding mutuality and common musical philosophy between two musicians who are usually geographically separated by a hemisphere. Slow to start, but culminating in a wholly dilated musical vision, the performance effectively collapses eons of musical practice and thought into a singular yet timeless expression of beauty and anguish that transcends the sum of its parts. 

Fleshing out the frequency spectrum between flighty, avian flutes and sprawling subharmonic bass riffs, they come to inhabit a thrilling mid-ground over the course of the album as O’Malley moves up the registers to thrashing mid-range riffs while Suryadi invokes a range of demonic voices and unearthly tones from his bamboo instrument. The results come to prod the pineal like little else beyond, say, O’Malley’s Nazoranai trio with Keiji Haino and Oren Ambarchi, or the first Phurpa album on his Ideologic Organ label, and we reckon should be hailed among the boldest and most astonishing records of 2020.

SENYAWA & STEPHEN O'MALLEY "Dewi Hera, Part I" (from "Bima Sakti" iDEAL198 LP)

With Contemplative Figuration we see Broshuda pushing his amorphous, impossible-to-pin-down music in exciting new directions. Stitched together in various European cities over the last few years, it is the artist’s most dynamic and ambitious release thus far, drawing equally from musique concrete, beat research, ambient, tape collage, and spoken word. Episodic in nature, the collection functions well as a sort of impressionistic travelogue, with romantic, hazy atmospheres coaxed from borrowed equipment, serendipitous recording sessions with old friends, and even a drum sequence programmed with Mario Paint, among other curios and sleights of hand. Broshuda deftly wrings bonafide cohesion and balance from these disparate source materials, tools, and locations, as on opener “Kakigori,” which allows a snaking harmonic drone the space to evolve before exploding it into a sort of seething, dubbed out pointillism. Later, “Lied Fuer Hase” concocts a potent, humid atmosphere of beautifully evolving acoustic piano loops and elegant narration. Taken as a whole, Contemplative Figuration is a weightless, transportive record, one that is bursting at the seams with ideas, mischief, and a restless spirit. 

Mastered by Helmut Erler at D&M
Artwork by Alex McCullough and Niall Wynne Lewis

Available 09/25/20 via sodagong.com / sodagong.bandcamp.com

Broshuda - "Obj. Contraire (feat. Elen Huynh)"

itwasthewires : modular synthesizers
Marco Lucchi : found sounds, synthesizers and mix down

settembre 2020

New Experimenta

The MadBeautiful!