extr : 8’35’’ -  1978 – CD: Cultures électroniques 14-27° concours international de musique et d’art sonore électroacoustique -
                                                  série Imeb / UNESCO / CIME 2000 - voix : Mercedes Cornu

Echos - extr : 8’35’’ - 1978

CS/DL : f-o-m.bandcamp.com/album/upstream-ensemble

@forms-of-minutiae and TBA21–Academy present "upstream ensemble", a communal happening and aqueous sound piece initiated and composed by field recordist, artist, and f–o–m co-founder Pablo Diserens (@pablodiserens)

During the 2022/23 digital residency hosted by TBA21–Academy’s Ocean-Archive.org, Pablo Diserens launched an open call inviting members of its online platform ocean comm/uni/ty (and external enthusiasts) to venture into the world and record aqueous sonic encounters. The aim of this collective liquid attuning was to gather sound recordings from various wet ecologies while stimulating listening and field recording gestures regardless of any previous experience.

Recordings from 35 contributors were woven into the long-form sound composition "upstream ensemble" which navigates between the multiplicity of the water cycle as a sounding body. The work moves upstream through oceans, rivers, pipe networks, ponds, and glaciers while investigating the continuous flow of water and the environments that surround it. Listeners encounter drifting habitats trickling with the songs of sea lions, dolphins, blue whales, humpback whales, Arctic terns, and algae photosynthesis – as well as with the invasive hums of submarines’ sonars, boats, and naval industries. With "upstream ensemble" some of the world’s aqueous fauna, flora, geologies, and technologies mingle into a synchronized motion that documents the sonic articulations of these wet zones.

In resonance with Pauline Oliveros’ Deep Listening practice and inspired by Rachel Carson’s exploration of the intertidal zone in her book "The Edge of the Sea", this project contributes to an ever-expanding list of works that propose a focus on listening as a way of engaging and existing with the planet’s waters. By stimulating shared listening and attuning practices, Pablo Diserens aims to develop a sense of interconnectedness by blurring the boundaries between species as well as environments. Experiencing aqueous biomes both individually and collectively acts as a way of rethinking our relationships with the world. Despite these being mostly solitary experiences, Pablo believes that field recording and listening are communal and environmental practices that form gateways for earthly synchronicity and world mapping in time and space. Thus listening in turn can become a political act that sparks emotional bonds with the world and its biotic communities.

˜

concept: Pablo Diserens and Fiona Middleton (TBA21–Academy)

composition and mixing: Pablo Diserens

with sound contributions by: Alëna Korolëva, Alexandros Maragkoudakis, Bence Kovács-Vajda, Christopher Dean, Cyane Findji, Damian Pace, Elise Rigot, Eliza Collin, Fiona Middleton, Francesco Previtali, Ilù Seydoux, Irene Mansoldo, Isabel Val, Jakob Köchert, Jean-Baptiste Geoffroy, Joana Moher, Katy Lewis Hood, Kosmas Phan Dinh, Kseniya Lushnikova, Leo Maassen, Ludwig Berger, Mat Eric Hart, Mathias Arrignon, Matty Yeomans, Mélia Roger, Moritz Zeisner, Nikos Sotirelis, Nina Blume, Ocean Networks Canada, Pablo Diserens, Sem Zeeman, Slavek Kwi, Surrealich, Thibault Noirot, Varoujan Cheterian.

all profit of the release will be donated to the Blue Marine Foundation.

listening with good speakers or headphones is recommended as the piece features a large range of frequencies (notably blue whales' subsonic calls).

cassette mastering by Mathieu Bonnafous

graphic design by Cecilia Murgia

cassettes pictures by Camille Blake

duration: 30’29’’ — C60
piece repeats on both sides — limited edition of 100
published by forms of minutiae & TBA21–Academy — fom09 — 2023

special thanks to all the contributors, Fiona Middleton, Markus Reymann, Michal Kucerak, Petra Linhartova, TBA21, Madelyn Byrd, Diane Barbé, Lou Croff Blake, Thom Lucero, and Mélia Roger.

cassette & digital

pablo diserens & the ocean comm/uni/ty — upstream ensemble [fom09]

from Ombrophilia, released in 2009 on either/OAR and re-issued on vinyl by Aposiopèse. Also available in digital format at bandcamp http://tomokosauvage.bandcamp.com/

Making of a Rainbow

This essential anthology of Kurdish music on the legendary Bärenteiter-Musicaphon label, featuring vocals, the blur flute, duduk, zurna and tenbur lute, is available for Flac and MP3 download on my blog:
https://music-republic-world-traditional.blogspot.com/2024/08/kurdish-kurde-kurdish-music-musical.html

Kurdish Music – Bärenteiter-Musicaphon – BM 30 SL 2028 

Kurdish traditional Music mix

This first LP by the great sarangi master released in 1955, featuring abstract and sensuous flights with the bowed instrument’s rich earthy sonorities, is available for Flac and MP3 download on my blog:
https://music-republic-world-traditional.blogspot.com/2024/09/india-inde-ram-narayan-plays-sarangi.html

Ram Narayan – Plays Sarangi – Solomon's Mines – SME 4

Ram Narayan – Plays Sarangi – Raga Asavar / Raga Des – Solomon's Mines – SME 4

This fascinating Sufi brotherhood music from northeastern Morocco, featuring sung poetry carried by two spellbinding flutes weaving eerie sonorities and trance-like rhythms, is available for Flac and MP3 download on my blog:
https://music-republic-world-traditional.blogspot.com/2024/11/morocco-maroc-ferka-jilaliya-zine.html

Sufi music - Ferka Jilaliya / Zine Mohamed Tangephone 484

This week we have a special episode for you as part of our inter-season programming - an interview with Matteo Pasquinelli. Of course, we’re still working hard to bring you more roundtable discussions with our wonderful Verso authors in our upcoming fourth series of The Verso Podcast, but until then we hope you’ll enjoy the exciting interim episodes we have in store for you.

Matteo Pasquinelli is an associate professor in Philosophy of Science at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice. His writing has appeared in AI and Society, e-flux, Multitudes, Radical Philosophy, the South Atlantic Quarterly, and many other places besides. He is the author of several books, including his most recent work, The Eye of the Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence - out now with Verso Books (https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/735-the-eye-of-the-master).

Matteo sat down with Richard Hames to explore some of the ideas laid out in his latest text - cutting against popular understandings of artificial intelligence that have come to increasingly dominate our cultural imaginaries, our workplaces, our digital lives, and our visions of the future. Pasquinelli argues that whilst many may claim that artificial intelligence imitates biological intelligence, the reality is that AI does not amount to a digital proxy of the neural pathways of individual human beings. Instead, he advances the opinion that AI imitates the intelligence of labor and social relations - framing it as a social and political creature, whose problems demand social and political responses. 

In this interview Matteo talks algorithms, IQ tests, and why AI will ultimately lead to us working more, not less.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the show so you can be the first to know when season four drops - and so that you don’t miss any of the bonus content coming your way between now and then. 

If you enjoy The Verso Podcast please consider leaving a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts - it really helps us out!

AI, Automation, and Algorithms | Matteo Pasquinelli

This terrific 7-inch record by singer Cheikha Rabia, one of the last great champions of authentic traditional raï with bendir drums and gasba flutes, is available for Flac and MP3 download on my blog:
https://music-republic-world-traditional.blogspot.com/2025/01/algeria-algerie-cheikha-rabia-relizania.html

Algerie – Cheikha Rabia – Assiaphone ASP 157

This exquisite album from Bali, released on the legendary first Ocora series, featuring gamelan ensembles accompanying shadow puppet theater, dances and theater, is available for Flac and MP3 download on my blog:
https://music-republic-world-traditional.blogspot.com/2025/01/indonesia-indonesie-bali-musique-et.html

Bali Gamelan Mix

Vegetal Negatives is a game of sonic mutations, mimicry, inversions, and association inspired by a text called "On pataphotograms", by the French writer René Daumal – a quasi-metaphysical essay that toys with breaking the conceived separateness of natural forms through poetic imagination. 

The four electroacoustic compositions on the album combine and arrange field recordings, electronic feedback, Buchla and ARP synthesizers, bowl gong and harmonium, textures of detailed acoustic sound, and sustained tones with gentle microtonal beating into a precise musical narrative. She juxtaposes recordings of rooms and empty vessels, natural and artificial climates, spontaneous and staged events. Ahti draws upon Annea Lockwood's ideas about associative movements between sounds based on shared characteristics and sonic energy. Her approach to field recordings is neither diaristic, documentaristic, nor purely acousmatic, but rather it starts out from somewhere in between these notions: the sounds hover between abstraction and the deeply familiar, moving into a realm of poetic metaphor where they are set in relation to each other, fleetingly mirroring or shadow-dancing. Acoustic environments mutate into synthetically derived shadow forms. 

The opening track, "Coastal Inversion”, moves from a seemingly familiar seascape into an ocean of wavelike synthetic staccato patterns, turning itself inside-out on the shore, before diving back into a sea of resonance. ”Rooftop gardens” arranges a series of largely unprocessed field recordings into a dream-logic sequence of upward movement towards the clouds. On the other side, ”Symbiogenesis” brews a slow evolution of wet, airy and earthy sounds and resonant friction. The closing track, ”Chora”, imagines a meditative space of breath: filter resonance posing as organ pipes against a backdrop of breezy industrial hoovers merges halfway with a harmonium improvisation that foregrounds the frictions of the wooden instrument itself, just before filtering out into resonant harmony. 

Releases March 29, 2019 via Hallow Ground 

Marja Ahti: composition, production, field recording, Buchla 200 and ARP 2600 
Recorded at EMS, Stockholm, WORM, Rotterdam, and on locations in Greece, Alaska, Finland and Sweden. 
Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi 
Designed by Ruth Stofer

Kurdish traditional Music mix

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