From KR118: Martina Bertoni - Electroacoustic Works for Halldorophone 
2LP / tape / DL out on february 21st 2025

MARTINA BERTONI - Nr. 1 Omen In G (Extract)

Mesmerising dance floor tapestries from a singular experimental musician.

Can you reinvent the human voice? The oldest musical instrument in existence, our voices are the foundation of music as we know it, and few push its limits in electronic music today like Lyra Pramuk. On her masterful debut, Fountain the Berlin-based, US-born artist's voice was the only instrument. No drums, no synths—just her voice warped, synthesized and layered to achieve orchestral-like electronics.

Five years on from her breakout, Pramuk's practice has steadily evolved, with a continued interest in ideas of folk and futurism, and how technology can enable us to build community beyond boundaries of time and space. There’s a holistic nature to her artistry, one that extends seamlessly into her DJing.

As she explains in the Q&A accompanying this week's RA Podcast, she sees her work as "part of a continuum of sacred, folkloric, and communal music represented by many different subcultures and communities across the world."

It's an approach that, like much of Pramuk's output, feels explicitly choral in nature. The first voice we hear on the mix comes from Lonnie Holley, his woozy Southern drawl calling out, "Earth will be there to catch us when we fall." (Although, you have to wonder, if we keep flogging the Earth, will it?) 

More voices follow across an eye-catching tracklist, from the poetry of friends (Nadia Marcus) to esoteric French chantresses from the ’80s (Anne Gillis), while Pramuk wraps an extensive amount of her own forthcoming material around tracks from SD Laika, Leyland Kirby, rRoxymore and 33EMYBW, to name just a few.

By the end, voice and noise become indistinguishable—stammering, glitchy vocals colliding with an orchestra of instruments. The effect is mesmerising.

Unfolding as one continuous composition, RA.979 exists somewhere between an ambient set at Kwia and the main stage at Unsound, voices and textures blurred into a fluid tapestry of sound. It's a singular offering to the series from a singular artist.

@lyra_songs

Read the interview and find the tracklist at ra.co/podcast/980

RA.979 Lyra Pramuk

A new guest mix by Donato Epiro and Gaspare Sammartano, who run @canti_magnetici, the South Italian label already featured in the February episode. This special broadcast has been programmed in response to Holy Week, as it includes traditional funeral music from the Holy Week processions in Taranto.

In 2022, on Holy Friday, Canti Magnetici released a tape entitled Musica Lacrimosa, not credited to any artist. Behind this title, which references the text of the Stabat Mater, lies a collection of funeral marches from the tradition of their hometown, Taranto, performed by band ensembles during the processions (Misteri) commemorating the passion and crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

At the time, the label offered no information about the music on the tape, limiting itself to a mention of Taranto, a photograph of the city’s port after the bombing on the night between 11 and 12 November 1940, and the recording date, 1974. It was their clear intention that the work not be perceived as an archival or documentary project. Instead, they hoped listeners would focus solely on the profound drama of the compositions and performances, somehow sounding equally remote and existential due to the nature of the procession marches and the now-deteriorated medium: an amatorial tape of field recordings, whose author remains unknown.

Today, they are presenting the work in an expanded version (which includes 45 minutes of tape recordings and a newly composed 15-minute piece) to share the sadness and sense of inadequacy that, as musicians and curators of an independent record label, they deeply feel in these historical times. Donato and Gaspare hope to create an occasion for reflection: How should art respond to the despair of the present? Especially as we live in a society increasingly accustomed to ever-growing self-referential, individualistic, hedonistic, promotional, and empty-hearted ways of life.

Listening to the decayed remnants of these old funerary compositions becomes for them a way to ponder on who we are as humans and where we continue to go wrong.

Turbo Sud / Radio Alhara w/ Donato Epiro & Gaspare Sammartano ('Musica Dolorosa'), 14th April 2025

For fans of SOTL's earlier minimal drone era. This Lost recording from 1997 of a remix of Stars of the Lid's Twin Peaks Episide # 30 Part 1, by James Plotkin. (Commissioned for $100USD)During this particular moment, the glory days of pre-file sharing, we had been considering and gathering remixes via the post for a potential release but as many things go in the world of Lid, the idea became a bit stale. Mostly due to our own boredom. We are not sure if this thing is of any decent quality, but if you listen at low levels then the effect could possibly lead to a good nap at the very least....

Stars of the Lid_Twin Plotkin_V2

Dreamsheep DS015
Digital Download

Originally released on tape in ultra-limited quantities (35 copies never really distributed in 2006 on a cassette called "Christmas Ragas"), the 26-minute long track "Winds & Strings From The Golden Crescent" is an audio journey lost into the sands of time and the lushous magic of the Middle-Eastern/Indian traditional music. Listening to this track is like having in your room Kadri Gopalnath's sax filtered through a boombox playing some slowed-down tapes of Ali Akbar Khan's early masterpieces, all covered into a thick fog of delays and lo-fi muddiness. Definitely recommended for fans of Canary Records, Nath Family and meditative/new age sounds with their gazes turned towards the East. Carefully remastered by Valerio Cosi himself from the original audio sources and digitally re-released on Dreamsheep.

released September 22, 2016

All instruments and music by Valerio Cosi*
*(except from some short samples of Indian music - sources unknown) 

 Winds & Strings From The Golden Crescent 

Taken from the album 'Modern Methods For Ancient Rituals' released as 2LP and download

Modern Methods For Ancient Rituals

The Transcendence Orchestra 'Upper Windrush' (EMEGO 246)

Tony Sexton - Africa Is Coming

Pere Ubu
4LP box set ‘LES HARICOTS SONT PAS SALÉS 1987-1991’
Released on 6th April 2018 

Pre-order: 
https://pereubumusic.bandcamp.com/album/les-haricots-sont-pas-sal-s-1987-1991

•	Third, and final, box set includes ‘The Tenement Year’ (1988), ‘Cloudland’ (1989), ‘Worlds In Collison’ (1991) and ‘The Lost Album’.

With Pere Ubu on hiatus since 1982’s excellent ‘Song Of The Bailing Man’, David Thomas had recorded a much-praised solo album and the band had now signed to a major label. In a period of rampant world commercialism, what would happen next?
 
Another crucial era for the band unraveled, Pere Ubu’s journey charted new undulating territory and so began a three-album escapade that retooled our understanding of what pop music is. The third in the four-part boxed set series, ‘Les Haricots Sont Pas Salés1987-1991’ sits between ‘The Architecture Of Language 1979-1982’ and ‘Drive, He Said 1994-2002’.

“Solid as the band can be, it's also likely to dissolve songs from the bottom up. For all Pere Ubu's uncertainty, the band isn't arbitrary; its music has the off-the-wall unity of a Marx Brothers routine,” said Jon Pareles of The New York Times on ‘The Tenement Year’.

One year later and things were further obscured with ‘Cloudland’ when they released “their industrial-strength equivalent of a class Beach Boys album from musicians more familiar with factories than surf.” (Greg Kot, Chicago Sun Times).  Then, in 1991, ‘Worlds In Collision’ became “the most atmospheric, carefully sculpted recording in the band's 13-album catalog.” (Tom Moon, Spin).

Here we have Pere Ubu between 1987 and 1991 with three phenomenal pop albums, together with the ‘The Lost Album’, an 11-track record of demos that sounds like they’d loosened the nut and bolts of the genre even further.  

Four of these tracks, ‘Around The Fire’,’ Down By The River’, ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ and ‘Invisible Man’ were recorded as demos for the album originally designed to follow ‘Cloudland’. Referred to by the band as ‘The Lost Album’ they are now joined with songs from ‘Cloudland’ that wouldn’t fit on the original vinyl release due to the length limitations of vinyl. The record also includes a tribute to Van Dyke Parks ‘Wine Dark Sparks’ and ‘Bang The Drum’ inspired by a Van Dyke Parks song. Genius.

Remastered by Paul Hamann at Suma Studio in February 2017 and designed by John Thompson, the four LP box set will be released on 6th April 2018.  Pere Ubu will also be on the road across Europe through May and June 2018.

Live dates:
22nd May: Zürich Rote Fabrik
23rd May: Fribourg Fri-Son 
24th May: Heidelberg Karlstorbahnhof 
25th May: Nürnberg Künstlerhaus 
26th May: Vienna Schauspielhaus 
28th May: Berlin Frannz Club 
30th May: Hamburg Hafenklang 
31st May: Amsterdam Paradiso
1st June: Diksmuide 4AD 
2nd June: Rotterdam WORM

Pere Ubu - LES HARICOTS SONT PAS SALÉS 1987-1991 - Sampler

Haley Fohr aka Circuit des Yeux goes deep and dark with a chilling blend of drones and tones.

For more information and tracklist, head here: http://www.factmag.com/2018/02/05/circuit-des-yeux-fact-mix/

FACT Mixes

FACT mix 638 - Circuit des Yeux (Feb '18)

Taken from Stroboscopic Artefacts' first compilation, Flowers From The Ashes: Contemporary Italian Electronic Music, out April 13th, 2018 on 2x12" / CD / Digital.

Order: https://stroboscopicartefacts.com/shop/flowers-from-the-ashes-salp006-sacd009/



Flowers From The Ashes is the latest multi-artist project to bear the acclaimed Stroboscopic Artefacts imprimatur. There is a sensibility of decadence and corroded grandeur etched within its four album sides, reminding us that historically “decadent” times have nonetheless resulted in some of the boldest acts of individual and collective creativity. Like the "floral" theme that has remained a consistent feature of S.A.’s graphic presentation, the music here equally presents fragility and intensity in a way that really drives home this visual metaphor for good, while still holding out the promise that similar creations will be seeded in the near future.

Though many of the artists involved have set of residence outside of their native Italy, all contribute here to make a captivating portrait of a shared spirit and cultural memory. The album opens with 'Errori', deceptively fragile sonic ornaments crafted and suspended in space by Blackest Ever Black artist Silvia Kastel. This is followed closely by the mellifluous, warming glow of percussionist Andrea Belfi’s 'Spitting & Skytouching', and then by the resolute electric bass patterns and luminous fog of 'Lux et Sonus', from Eeri label head Marco Shuttle. Hospital Productions alumnus Ninos du Brasil open the B-side with a similarly dense, amorphous construction built from tribalistic chants and rhythmic patterns, to be followed by Mannequin label boss Alessandro Adriani’s 'You Will Not Be There For The End', showcasing his distinctive take on the "paranoiac breakdance" aesthetic of classic EBM. S.A. veteran Chevel rounds out the first record in the program by interlacing several percolating synth lines together into a richly conversational piece.

The journey continues with 'Starving The Mind', an undulating mini-epic from S.A. founder Lucy that is animated by his signature balance of seductiveness and concentration. The bright, biting acid synth tones of 'PRV-HH3-X', by Lory D, then takes a sharp right turn into an invisible metropolis ruled by reflective high fashion and hidden intrigue. The imposing architecture of 'Virgo Rebellion', designed by modular synth futurist Caterina Barbieri, acts as an excellent companion piece, and sets up the closing '4G' from Spazio Disponibile co-founder Neel - a crepuscular serenade that accurately sums up much of the foregoing activity.


All tracks (w)&(p) by Silvia Kastel, Andrea Belfi, Marco Shuttle, Ninos Du Brasil, Alessandro Adriani, Chevel, Lucy, Lory D, Caterina Barbieri & Neel.
Graphic concept by Ignazio Mortellaro [OA].
℗ & © Stroboscopic Artefacts 2018.
Cat. No SALP006 / SACD009 - all rights reserved.
www.stroboscopicartefacts.com
info@stroboscopicartefacts.com

Order

D1 - Caterina Barbieri - Virgo Rebellion [SALP006/SACD009]

Taken from the upcoming debut LP 'Power'.

Released July 13th 2018, digitally, and on limited edition (1000) vinyl, via Tri Angle Records. Pre-orders coming soon.

POWER

Lotic - Hunted

New song "Ghost" available on LP through Communion - 10/2016. Follow me here, I hope you'll enjoy.





"Cosi is truly a first rate player and composer whose work effortlessly oscillates from traditional, swinging jazz melodies to soul purging Ayler-esque dirges." (Alex Cobb - Students Of Decay label owner/musician) 

"Cosi could turn out to be one of the real discoveries of 2006." (John Cavanagh, writer/musician/Pink Floyd biographer) 

"I couldn't recommend highly enough Italian wunderkind multi-instrumentalist Valerio Cosi's "Immortal Attitudes" (CDR); his sun-drenched sax-drone-ragas will make you wish it was 1969 and you were on acid and hanging with Terry Riley at an Alice Coltrane gig - or vice versa." (Stephen Clover, Foxy Digitalis writer/musician)

"The best stuff is a little smoother than that, melting bits of semi-modality into flattened stretches of drone. But even those spots have this weird kind of incongruity, an odd sense that these things just shouldn't be put together, that I really dig. Maybe it's not so much shouldn't as usually aren't, which is kinda refreshing - even my fave recs of late don't offer anything so intriguingly off..." (Marc Masters, Pitchfork / Noiseweek)