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Nightsorrow - Violaine (FREE DL)

Broken Harmonics 963 Hz [Dark Nature Concept]

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Early last year, Punctum finished recording their debut record, Remote Sensing, at the legendary EMS studio in Stockholm. After nearly a year and a half, the album is finally ready for public consumption. I have an oddly personal relationship to an album that is not yet released. I first got a taste of their work in a mix from Maria W Horn, which featured the heavy and hypnotic ‘Quick Botta’. This became a major go-to headphone listen. Strongly recommended for long journeys in the dark.

Technically speaking, a lot of the music on this record quite simple to describe. 303s, 606s and Buchlas dance around each other like an harmonic kaleidoscope. But listen to ‘Glory Bitch’ below. There’s a lot more going on here than simple synth meanderings, the likes of which every bedroom producer knows all too well. There is a meticulous care that has been taken in its entrance and exit. It’s like a set of opening credits, or an tuning orchestra, setting the stage for something huge, before snaking away into the distance. Fitting then, this should be the opening for one of the most exciting records in recent memory.

Remote Sensing

Premiere: Punctum - Glory Bitch [SUMME]

Excerpt from Pierre Bastien's Live album ''The Mecanocentric Worlds of Pierre Bastien'' out on 27th October on Vinyl and Digital.

More info at www.discrepant.net

Pierre Bastien - May Yam (Excerpt from The Mecanocentric Worlds of Pierre Bastien)

Andrea Taeggi—Zimní Král (12" vinyl LP)

The music on this record was made using a vast array of rare analog machines Andrea had the chance to work on at the Willem-Twee synthesis studio in Holland (built with the iconic Studio di Fonologia RAI as a blueprint). Most of the percussive sounds come from an Analog Computer, which has been rarely used only as a music instrument (its main purpose was flight simulation). In fact, during the Cold War times it was also used as measurement tool by civil engineers and even by the army. 
To my knowledge, very few artists have given a new context to the such device, which I have found absolutely unique-sounding and gave me enough inspiration to compose a whole new album focused on it. 

At present, no one has ever officially released music recorded at the Willem-Twee synthesis studio.

The music on this record further explores cyclical, minimal and hypnotic concoctions – a particular  investigation focused on unusual rhythms that Andrea had already started on his well-received ‘Mama Matrix Most Mysterious’, released on Type in 2015. Think walls of subfrequencies, snappy rollercoasters of the mind, labyrinths in hyperspace & snakes eating their own tails.

Zimní Král means “Winter King” in Czech and was the epithet given to Frederick V Elector Palatine (king of Bohemia), the last of a legacy to actively support alchemy as a means of studying reality, the self and their inter-reflections.

All music by Andrea Taeggi
https://andreataeggi.wordpress.com

Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M Berlin

Forthcoming on SM-LL Sept 1st, 2018
http://www.sm-ll.com

Dinergy (SM-LL, Sept 1st)

Artist: ASUNA & Jan Jelinek
Album: Signals Bulletin
Label#: Faitiche18
 
Faitiche is delighted to announce the release of a new collaboration between the Japanese sound artist ASUNA and Jan Jelinek: the album Signals Bulletin brings together joint improvisations and compositions made over a period of three years in Berlin, Kyoto and Kanazawa. ASUNA’s meandering organ drones merge with Jelinek’s pulsating synthesizer and field recording loops to create dense superclusters that span broad harmonic arcs.

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Watching the Japanese sound artist ASUNA playing the organ, some people might be surprised. ASUNA is no virtuoso flying over the keyboard in a rage. Instead, with the calm gestures of an office worker, he cuts strips of adhesive tape to the correct length before sticking them onto the keys of his instrument. In this way, large clusters of keys are held down, creating a dense and sustained range of frequencies, while the sound artist continually prepares further sets of keys or removes tape again. I have rarely seen a more convincing performance concept, with such a power to fascinate.

I first met ASUNA when we both gave a concert at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, his home city. He performed the organ drones as described above and I immediately knew I wanted to collaborate with him. Six years and five meetings later, we completed Signals Bulletin. The album includes both joint improvisations and compositions, recorded in Berlin, Kanazawa and Kyoto.

Whether using prepared organ, Casio keyboards or mechanical plastic toys, ASUNA creates rich textures of sound that barely change over long stretches of time. It is a music without breaks. For a while, I was unsure how my loops made using modular synthesizers and live sampling fitted here – until I realized the role I had to take in this duet: I would provide the rhythmically pulsating foundation over which his dense continuums could unfold.

The result is harmonically drifting superclusters that put us into a meditation-like state. It can perhaps be compared to Automatic Writing – a mode of creative expression floating somewhere between concentration and distraction. Both the structure of our pieces and our approach to our instruments allow a similar “absence”: we let the machines play and repeat themselves – while we, in a mild form of trance, adopt the role of observers, intervening only occasionally.

It is no coincidence that ASUNA owns a collection of Doodle Art – drawings jotted down during conversations or while talking on the phone. It is said that works made like this point to the unconscious and reveal pet motifs – because a doodler always inadvertently returns to his or her favourite themes. The artwork for Signals Bulletin features pictures from the collection, in this case sheets of paper from the pads provided in stationery shops to test out pens. The special quality of such doodles is that the jumble of drawings is the work of a collective whose individual members do not know each other. Layer by layer is added, by someone different each time – until it becomes a dense cluster of lines and symbols ...
Jan Jelinek, Berlin 2018

ASUNA & Jan Jelinek: Relief, Pt.1

The Sacrificial Code

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

Artist: Andrew Pekler
Album: Sound From Phantom Islands
Label#: Faitiche20
Format: LP/DL

Faitiche is delighted to present a new album by Andrew Pekler: Sounds From Phantom Islands brings together ten tracks created over the last three years for the interactive website Phantom Islands - A Sonic Atlas. With his 2016 album Tristes Tropiques, Pekler created a highly unique cosmos of ethnographic sound speculations. Sounds From Phantom Islands continues and simultaneously expands this concept: finely elaborated chordal motifs float like fog over fictional maritime landscapes. A masterpiece of contemporary Exotica.

Phantom islands are islands that appeared on historical maps but never actually existed. The status of these artefacts of European colonial expansion from the 15th to the 19th century oscillates between cartographic fact and maritime fiction. Sounds From Phantom Islands interprets and presents these imaginations as a quasi-ethnographic catalog of music and synthetic field recordings. The pieces on this album are based on recordings made for Phantom Islands - A Sonic Atlas, an online interactive map developed with cultural anthropologist Stefanie Kiwi Menrath.

Andrew Pekler: Description Of Rain (Over Frisland)

Charles Curtis: Performances & Recordings 1998-2018 3xCD (SLT-005)

Saltern presents its fifth release, Charles Curtis: Performances & Recordings 1998-2018, the first comprehensive collection of recordings surveying the career of renowned, American cellist Charles Curtis. Selected by Curtis and Tashi Wada from recordings spanning the past two decades, the collection offers a broad, inclusive view of Curtis's activities across the diverse worlds of music he inhabits, containing rare, unreleased recordings, and never-before-released music by Terry Jennings, Richard Maxfield, Éliane Radigue, Alison Knowles, and Curtis. The wide-ranging scope of this release speaks not to a musical restlessness, but to a genuine spirit of inquiry, as these areas of activity for Curtis have existed concurrently in dialogue, not simply in succession, for decades. Over two hours of music by composers and artists with whom Curtis is closely associated including Éliane Radigue, Guillaume de Machaut, Tobias Hume, Silvestro di Ganassi, Terry Jennings, Morton Feldman, Anton Webern, Olivier Messiaen, Alison Knowles, Richard Maxfield, and Curtis himself. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu with liner notes by La Monte Young, Spencer Gerhardt, and Tashi Wada. Custom packaging and screen printing by Alan Sherry; edition of 500.

Performances & Recordings 1998-2018

Charles Curtis – Unfinished Song (1998)

Just before 2020 comes to an end, Berlin-based artist @leozylberberg graces this crazy (!) year  with an oddball of a track: “Sheshells” is a total earworm and at the same time a bit off, maybe. It’s chill, it’s haunted, and it might be the most appropriate end to 2020 one can imagine. “Despite its imperfections, it feels like some sort of antidote to something,” as the Australian artist puts it herself.

Sheshells is published as a digital single. It features an artwork from Paris-based graphic designer and art director Olga Prader’s Ftantasy series. The track is Präsens Editionen’s fourth audio release in 2020, following music by Remo Helfenstein, @samuelreinhard , and @damexlove , that is ranging from gospel and dark ambient-informed lullabies to proper sad-boy-reggaeton-heat.

Zylberberg is a mainstay at @sameheads , Berlin’s most infamous pub / fashion store / club / art space / what not. In 2017, she came to attention with a split tape realized with the wonderful Belia Winnewisser. Earlier this year, the Australian artist published Greatestings on @noisekoelln , a label that came back to life just for this highly limited 10” after a four-year period of inactivity. Zylberberg is part of Balance Crew alongside partner in crime @dane-close .

Sheshells

Buy the Track

L.Zylberberg - Sheshells (PE-022)

Factish (french / german faitiche) "(...) is a combination of facts and fetishes, and makes it obvious that the two have a common element of fabrication." Bruno Latour, 1999.

Faitiche is a label by Jan Jelinek.