DØ Variatiøns

For ensemble and multichannel, asymmetrical sound (excerpt)

Premiered by Black Page Orchestra at Wien Modern, 2022
Christina Bauer: Klangregie
Yalda Zamani: Conductor

Recording produced by ORF/Radio Österreich

Wigmaker - Black Page Orchestra, Wien Modern (2022)

@michaelspeers - 19'54"
Live at Instants Chavirés, Montreuil, 23rd November 2023.
Recorded and mixed by Benjamin Pagier. Additional mix by Michael Speers.
Deardogs 2023 archives.
archive.org/details/michael-speers-live

Michael Speers - 19'54"

https://bruit-direct.org/product/les-modernos-ciutats/

Lès Modernos present a psycho-geographic trip to Andalusia, a journey recomposed in a green Corolla. Mechanized and pastoral collages. Miniature songs, luminous yet just a little heavy, from the great theater of life. Car radio samples, recorded from the passenger seat of the Father's vehicle.

Al-Mutreb Abul-Loul, Big City Orchestra, Eric Copeland, Bertold Brecht, Sachiko Matsubara, Hopeton ‘Scientist’ Brown, Cabaret Voltaire (Red Mecca), a French singer, resolutely of the now  (or Jonathan Richman).

Fears greater than us, heredity, death, love, oblivion. And this fever which always consumes us.

Released on purple vinyl by Bruit Direct Disques
Sleeve by Trigore

Lès Modernos - "laques2" from CIUTATS lp

A potentially surprising release on Editions Mego. Another planned prior to the untimely passing of Peter Rehberg in 2021. 

Melvin Gibbs is the renowned bass player and producer from Brooklyn who’s vast resume includes playing with Sonny Sharrock, John Zorn, The Rollins Band, Dead Prez, Caetano Veloso and Femi Kuti amongst others. A solid resume, no doubt, but what is Gibbs doing on Editions Mego? 

Behind the scenes, those who know Gibbs knew that amongst all this he was also tinkering away at another form of music, one which skirts around the border between music and sound design. The Wave is the first release that reveals this side of Gibbs’ creative output to those outside his inner circle.

The driving force for this output is Gibbs’ multi-decade friendship with acclaimed  American video artist and cinematographer Arthur Jafa. Over the course of time Gibbs and Jafa have had many conversations about music and the connection between film and music. Jafa’s desire to make film that worked the way Black (as in Black/African-American/ Afro-diasporic peoples) music worked inspired Gibbs to study the filmmakers Serge Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov and incorporate their philosophies and tactics when recording his own music. The two discussed sound design which directly informed Gibbs’ choice of music making tools and led to him acquiring Symbolic Systems Kyma software and hardware, incorporating this as a composition tool and sound design and component in his work. These conversations bore concrete fruit through Gibbs’ work for TNEG, the film studio Jafa ran with filmmakers Malik Sayeed and Elissa Blount Moorhead. Gibbs created the soundtrack for their very first project, the short film “Deshotten 1.0” (2009 - directed by Jafa and Sayeed) as well as their Martin Luther King-inspired meditation on Black life “Dreams Are Colder Than Death” (2013, directed by Jafa)  

The bass-forward music, or ‘sonics’ as Gibbs calls it, emerged from an alternative mode of contemplation, a mode that he sees as closer to the mindset of a rootworker, an African-American herbal doctor who cures psychic ailments using means derived from African spiritual practice, entering a forest to find the right plants for a suffering client than a mediator attempting to invoke mindfulness. Gibbs says this practice yields results that suggest an aural form of creation akin to coagulation, a formal movement that gives the sense that a flow of sounds can emit something bearing resemblance to solidifying objects. 

In 2020 Jafa asked Gibbs to work on the soundtrack for a work in progress called “The Wave''. When they got together to work on the soundtrack, Jafa played Gibbs a selection of sounds that included random moments of (probably unwanted) feedback on 70's Miles Davis records, Pop Smoke's Brooklyn drill, the music of Bernard Gunter and Darmstadt-style compositions made with test equipment. Those sounds, filtered through years of conversation with Jafa about Black creativity and the possible evolution of Black music, formed the sonic vocabulary of “The Wave”. 

Over time the sonics evolved and “The Wave” became the piece Jafa calls "AGHDRA". This soundtrack incorporates and expands upon the sonics composed for “The Wave”. Gibbs mentions although the work with Jafa has always skirted these lines of evolution, this side of his vocabulary has been generally neglected, until now, due to his current jazz musician/jazz festival-centric focus and radar. 

The result of this parallel exploration is a deep excursion into a nuanced sound world. The rich tapestry of textures allows one's mind to explore and project within this bed of curious investigation of sound. The bristling, itching, restless, clicking, diving nature of the electronic sound world presented by Gibbs, is abstract and unearthly on the surface but closer listening (which it demands) reveals a very human quality to these austere shapes.

Anamibia Sessions 1: The Wave

Ibo Code

Melvin Gibbs 'Ibo Code' (EMEGO291)

Odpływ: #30 <3

weird witches & goddexes leaking 
chaotic tears, sonic soundscapes, deep screams, sweet ballads, demonic psalms
another fierce hour with f*male & queer artists voices to listen

Tracklist : https://lyl.live/episode/canticles-of-ecstasy-6

Canticles Of Ecstasy w/ Mona Servo (06/03/24)

some memories and melodies of anybard, who, as always, is attempting to establish connection with ghosts on the channel. chamber music, demos and walkie talkie singing. 
all music by spellcaster / h hartvig

24 (from "c–recup" EP)

Totally beautiful and rare piano performance from Loren Connors, joined on guitar by long time collaborator Alan Licht. 
Celebrating thirty years of collaboration, Loren Connors and Alan Licht performed for two nights at OTO on May 5 and 6th, 2023. On the second night, with the stage lit in blue, Connors took up a seat on the piano stool whilst Licht picked up the guitar. What followed was the duo’s first ever set with Connors on piano - one of only a few times Connors has played piano live at all - here captured and issued as The Blue Hour. Its spacious warmth came as a total surprise live, but makes complete sense for a duo whose dedicated expressionism takes inspiration from a vast spectrum of emotion.

Both opening with single notes to start, it doesn't take long before a surface rises and begins to shimmer. A run up the keys, the drop of a feedback layer on a sustained and bent note. The two begin to exchange notes in tandem and brief touches of melody and chord hover. After a while, Connors picks up the guitar, stands it in his lap and sweeps a wash of colour across Licht’s guitar. Sharp, glassy edges begin to form, open strings and barred frets darkening the space. When his two pedals begin to merge, Licht finds a dramatic organ-like feedback and it’s hard not to imagine Rothko’s Chapel, its varying shades of blue black ascending and descending in the room.

When Connors goes back to the piano for the second side, the pair quickly lock into a refrain and light pours in. It’s a kind of sound that Licht says reminds him of what he and Connors would do when the duo first started playing together 30 years ago. It’s certainly more melodic than some of their more recent shows, and the atonal shards of At The Top of the Stairs seem to totally dissolve. What is always remarkable about Licht is that his enormous frame of reference doesn't seem to weigh him down, and instead here he is able to delicately place fractures of a Jackson C Frank song (“Just Like Anything”,) amongst the vast sea of Connors’ blues.

Perhaps it's the pleasure of playing two nights in a row together, or the nature of Connor’s piano playing combined with Licht’s careful listening, but the improvisation on The Blue Hour feels remarkably calm and unafraid. There’s nothing to prove and no agenda except the joy of sounding colour together. Totally beautiful. 

---

Recorded live at Cafe OTO on Saturday 6th May 2023 by Billy Steiger
Mixed by Oli Barrett
Mastered by Sean McCann
Artwork by Loren Connors
Layout by Oli Barrett
Screenprint by Tartaruga

 Edition of 300 standard LPs, 100 LPs with screenprinted artwork inserts and 200 CDs.

ROKU037 - Loren Connors & Alan Licht "The Blue Hour" [excerpt]

release on 22 January 2021 : https://bit.ly/3bW9clI
@covarino

"Field recordings from outside my home, San Valentino della Collina, April 12th, 2020
Percussion recorded at my parents' home, September 10th, 2020"

Francesco Covarino - Mantello II

cassette label . . . all kinds of music . . .
transient creations looking for balance in uncommon spaces.
demos welcome : wabisabi(dot)tapes(at)gmail(dot)com

artworks : 
Yann Rambaud (WBSB001 > WBSB008)
Coline Llobet (WBSB009 > WBSB014)
Mona Chancogne (WBSB015>WBSB020)
mastering : Adrien Lambert

Francesco Covarino - Mantello II

wabi-sabi tapes

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