the rough and discontinuous aspect I like a lot

Taken from the album 'Piano Muisc 1-7' released as LP, CD and digital.


Editions Mego is proud to welcome Powell to its roster with a bizarre and strangely emotive new LP of synthetic computer works entitled Piano Music 1-7.

Via his own Diagonal Records imprint, his work on XL Recordings and, most recently, the opening of audio/film platform A Folder [afolder.studio], Powell has firm footing in the contemporary electronic landscape. During a wry and obstinate musical life he has twisted myriad synthetic forms into shapes that explore and expand upon the districts of post-punk, techno, noise + computer music, and in the the last year alone he has released four albums of hi-def abstractions, each inspired by a formalisation of music proposed by Iannis Xenakis. 

As an extension of this intense period of work/research/play with stochastic functions [using probabilities to compose music], various processes emerged that Powell then began to apply to more traditional musical events. Where ordinarily in his work the probabilities and relationships are used to define parameters such as wave-shape, folding, FM, filter modes etc., he now began to use them to create musical formations and visual scores that could be played back using any software/MIDI instrument [one of these can be seen on the rear cover of the LP release]. While mapping out this cartography of relations, he used a basic Grand Steinway sampler as a placeholder instrument; the longer the process went on, though, the more he began to embrace the acoustic properties of the synthetic piano and make it the bedrock for this new constellation of work. 

Piano Music 1-7, subtitled ‘Music for Synthetic Piano and Assorted Electronics’, consists of seven different synthetic islands strung together into a single composition. All were composed using the aforementioned processes that allowed Powell to play a piano, even if he never learned to do so with his hands. After all, ’In writing electronic music,’ Robin Mackay once wrote, ‘you also have to direct the invention of new tools.’

At times the piano skips gleefully over shadowing synthesis, whilst at others the synthetic sheets swarm and envelope the keys. The interplay between the two create a fantastical alternate reality, a cosmic machine in which time is eroded, shrunk and expanded, like a wax upon which operations and relations are inscribed or engraved. Many of the pieces express a playfulness or optimism verging on vitalism, as bundles of piano notes dance and interpolate with a never-repeating range of electronic gestures. The feel is of a brightly coloured flower-bed in various stage of bloom. This interplay of the [artifical] acoustic and the electronic builds on the pioneering processes developed by David Behrman in works such as Leapday Night, and Piano Music 1-7 could also be posited as a modern take on Conlon Nancarrow’s investigations for player piano. Similarly, the razor-sharp sonic properties and unfolding of non-human events recall the computer works of Xenakis and the surgical precision of Mego mainstay Florian Hecker.

Recorded in late 2020, these new Powell works propose not just a bold and bright vision of electronic music but serve also as a map with which, for 35 minutes at least, we can navigate our way out of the current milieu. As the artist himself remarks in the sleeve-notes, ‘. . . What emerged from this fog or soup [for me] were ideas and processes that felt affirmative and life giving — sensations I had always hoped to convey in my music. Perhaps the optimism or positivity I felt at these musical events unfolding, these clusters and knots tumbling in different directions across time, can also be felt by you.’

Music for Synthetic Piano and Assorted Electronics

Composed and recorded by Powell, 2020
Mixed by Powell and Tobin Jones at The Park Studios, London
Mastered by Russell Haswell

Art direction by Guy Featherstone
Photography by John Cronin

Powell 'Piano Music #1' (EMEGO 301)

Polish artist Martyna Basta presents Making Eye Contact With Solitude, a suite of intimate, diaristic ambient pieces assembled over the past several months. Created using almost exclusively field recordings and her voice (alongside violin, zither and harpsichord), this collection meditates on domesticity, loneliness, repetitiveness, stubborn patterns of isolated minds and the sonic mysteries all around us. There’s a real gentleness to these spontaneous and confessional improvisations, despite that fact that making them was a way of “making peace with myself and the reality around me” for the Kraków-based artist. The artwork created by costume designer, sculptor and illustrator Julita Goździk and track titles also allude to an interest in rituality, repetitiveness and the cyclical nature of our existence.

Constant listening, instinct and intuition are key to Martyna Basta’s practice. Having studied classical guitar for many years as a child, Basta now focuses her energies on more abstract forms of art as a photographer, musician, member of the PROGREFONIK collective and Radio Kapitał resident. Making Eye Contact With Solitude follows a string of shorter self-releases and is her label debut, and a wonderful introduction to her back-catalogue for many. Slotting in somewhere between the vocal mantras of Cucina Povera, the emotional immediacy of Claire Rousay’s recordings and the carefully crafted sonic environs of Félicia Atkinson, Martyna Basta is carving out a unique corner of the ambient world for herself. 

Pre-order: https://martynabasta.bandcamp.com/album/making-eye-contact-with-solitude

Making Eye Contact With Solitude

Martyna Basta – Awakening

021-M-001

'For Wind Poetry' releases October, 2022.

https://vaagner.bandcamp.com/album/for-wind-poetry-2

Wind Poetry

VAK 62 | yolabmi - Reborn (+ Felt)

info + tracklist: https://radio.syg.ma/episodes/guests-167-ybalferran
https://blazejkotowski.com
https://soundcloud.com/ybalferran

GUESTS

GUESTS 167 – Ybalferran

Ecstatic is thrilled to announce Foreign Body, the latest release from Barcelona-based Dania Shihab, who crafts dreamlike transmissions into the evocative concept of the 'foreign body' in the context of forced migration and cultural loss. 

A tapestry of sounds and emotions, this work is a product of Dania's exploration of her experiences as an Iraqi-born individual who grew up in Tasmania, Australia, an island where her native culture was completely absent. The profound sense of longing for a homeland that has never truly been experienced reverberates throughout, with each track poignantly capturing the complexities of feeling like a stranger in one's own body and society. 

Inspired by her work as an emergency doctor, the artist delves into the idea of removing foreign bodies, and sees forced migrants as 'foreign bodies' within their adopted societies. This release serves as a window into the emotional displacement of forced migrants and the struggle for cultural identity. 

Foreign Body was written and recorded at home in Barcelona, using a 4-track tape recorder, vocal looping techniques, modular synthesis, and collaged samples of Iraqi musicians and poets from the post-Gulf War era into an amorphous cloud of magnetic drones and soft hypnogogic vocal textures to entrance the listener. 

An emotive and evocative release, Foreign Body weaves together sounds and stories to explore a universal human experience. It is a testament to the sublime power of music to communicate emotion.

Dania - Foreign Body

Archaic Vaults is pleased to present the first vinyl album for the label, cataloguing ten tracks from ten artists spanning the globe. This curation brings together a multiplicity of genres within the label’s ongoing thematic output - durational ambience, field recordings, oversaturated improvisations and spatialised synthetic loops among them. A diverse cohort of familiar and new collaborators alike.

Edition of 300. Design by Severin Black.

https://archaicvaults.bandcamp.com/album/continuing-a-worn-out-tradition-iii

Continuing A Worn Out Tradition III

A4. Chantal Michelle 'Borghese Gardens September' [AV011]

From Lisa Lerkenfeldt

Recorded in Naarm, ’Shell Of A City’ reframes the architecture an instrument, in a concrète procession.

Durational contact recordings of a highway’s substructure reveal an unearthly resonance.

The continuous physical phenomenon is gently processed to explore the fringes of electroacoustic practice with a contemplative urgency.

The 40 minute arrangement pairs two channels of site-based improvisation into a time-altering minimal structure.

Many people wrote to me to say ‘A Liquor Of Daisies’ tape was a tool they used for rest. How precious. ‘Shell Of A City’ follows in its path.

I carve out space for listening to the discrete and lesser noticed.

Lisa Lerkenfeldt - Shell Of A City

"You cannot put your foot in the same river twice. Once ᴇʀᴏꜱɪᴏɴ ᴛʀᴀᴄᴇ begins, the listener is quick to draw comparison to previous Glyn Maier releases, as in ɪɴᴅᴇꜰɪɴɪᴛᴇ ʟᴀᴛᴛɪᴄᴇꜱ or the B-Side from the Jungle Gym release ʜʟɪɴᴄ. Instead, what happens is the truest descriptor of a “departure” in style and pacing.

Going back into the deeper catalog of Maier’s work you would likely cross influences of dub techno in the clicking and delaying bass tones, with sharp field recording rustling and chirps that create a fecund listening ecosphere.

This new album instead changes the pace to a glacial presentation, starting with a dark and sleek motif, generously pouring into rhythm and more subdued field recordings of the Appalachian wilderness. It almost seems like an album showcasing Maier’s ability to listen as much as it is his ability to produce. The finishing work with synth and string sections is a sublime reminder of his deft and capable craft in sound. We may not stand in the same water as before, but the river has the same name."

- David Coccagna

An Industrial Coast production

Recorded by Glyn Maier in White Mountain + Pisgah National Forests 2019-2022 - B2 contains source material from Joe Hisashi "Kikujiro"

Audio finalized by Glyn Maier

Artwork by Laura Arteaga Charlton (www.lauraarteagacharlton.com)

Erosion Trace

Emerald Pool

mukashi no hanashi

art by dalibor cruz


made w/ puredata, resampling using ableton

Obe - Ine

yolabmi24（at）gmail.com
https://soundcloud.com/recfeel

MADPIA
"Even if we knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, we would still play music."

mukashi no hanashi

yolabmi

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