Inscrutably Obvious
A lost electronic gem of UK post punk vintage resurfaces with Kevin Harrison’s 1981 debut ‘Inscrutably Obvious’
Vlf
Alex Barnett (Champagne Mirrors, Oakeater, SCRAPES Recordings) and Faith Coloccia (Mamiffer, Mára) developed a friendship based on a fascination with the world just outside the limit of our understanding - the world where magic and mystery hold equal footing with science. On their third collaborative album VLF, the duo draft a soundtrack to the mapping of the unknown realms in both their private lives and the communal world around them. It’s a premise embedded in the album title, an acronym for …
Fabric for String Noise
Michael Byron's Fabric for String Noise, Parts 1 and 2 (2018), composed for New York’s notable violin duo String Noise, is wildly virtuosic music that is unlike just about anything else ever written for two violins. This two-movement work, a tremendous (and relentless) river of complex lines, may be said to resemble a sort of universal folk music of madly driven ecstasy, a sonic canvas wherein intense continuous activity shares space with an overarching sense of motionlessness.The composer chara…
River of 1,000 Streams
Daniel Lentz's River of 1,000 Streams is a complex, slowly growing, densely textural piece for solo piano and up to 11 layers of “cascading echoes” (which are created in a live performance via a computer running a MAX patch). Each of the piece’s hundreds of “echoes” is a short moment (generally one to a few bars in length) of the piano solo that may reappear anywhere from a half-second to 25 minutes after the pianist first plays it. Floating sparsely amid the piece’s rich primary texture of trem…
Deconstruction
Finally, Hospital Productions unveil the long awaited vinyl debut from the elusive Salford Electronics, backed with killer remixes by Ancient Methods and Vatican Shadow. Tipped if you're into Burial, Regis, Silent Servant...!Plucked from right under our noses, Salford Electronics appears to be a handle for David Padbury, whose credits for industrial units such as Death Pact International and The Grey Wolves stretch back to the ‘80s. Under the SE mantle however, Padbury pursues a stealthy, menaci…
Windmill
Stephen Whittington writes:“…from a thatched hut draws upon a particular strand of Chinese culture: the Chinese scholar who withdraws, temporarily or permanently, from society. The thatched hut was the place where the great Tang dynasty poets Du Fu (Tu Fu) and Li Bai (Li Po) withdrew from the world. Their example was followed by many others, including the poet Bai Juyi (Po Chu-I), author of Record of the Thatched Hut on Mount Lu, and Xia Gui, the Song dynasty painter of Twelve Views from a Thatc…
Ecstatic Descent
Erik Griswold's Ecstatic Descent is a prepared-piano work that melds composed and improvisational elements to create an intensely animated, one-of-a-kind textural sound world. Performed here by the composer, at times it may call to mind an enormous out-of-control music box or mechanical toy. It also readily lends itself to comparisons to various ever-changing (yet ever the same) natural sound phenomena, and has been likened by composer Annea Lockwood to the bubbling frequencies of a river.The co…
Bhajan
Nicholas Chase's Bhajan, described by one critic as “a pas de deux between violin and electronics,” is in four joined/continuous sections. Influenced by many musics from around the globe, the work tantalizes and bewitches the ear with a breadth of sounds that ebb and flow as if guided by an elusive but inherent sense of logic. The composer performs its electronics/computer part while noted violinist Robin Lorentz (who has appeared on four previous Cold Blue CDs) propels the music compellingly, i…
After the Wars
Peter Garland's After the Wars, a resonant, sometimes clangorous four-movement piano solo, displays a unique sense of grace and a sincerity of expression that is quintessentially Garlandesque. In some ways it marks a slight shift of focus from his more overtly melodic and rhythmically driven material of the past 30 years. Garland writes about the piece:“After the Wars was commissioned by pianist Sarah Cahill as part of her A Sweeter Music project. The idea (I believe) was to focus on the idea of…
In the Village of Hope
Michael Byron's In the Village of Hope is a restless (and in some ways relentless) virtuosic harp solo performed by Tasha Smith Godínez, who commissioned the work. This ever-changing, ever-churning, ever-developing music is unlike anything else in the solo harp repertoire, though not unlike some of Byron’s other recent work, such as his Book of Horizons for pianist Joseph Kubera.Byron writes about the music:“In the Village of Hope,” a purely sentimental title, was composed at the invitation of h…
In The Sea Of Ionia
In the Sea of Ionia is a wildly spinning, charismatically eclectic album containing four of Daniel Lentz’s recent piano works: (1) 51 Nocturnes (2011), a set of very short, contrasting nocturnes that are played without pauses, as one continuous work; (2) Pacific Coast Highway (2014), a primarily textural three-piano piece built of polyrhythmic layers of continuously shifting/drifting harmonies; (3) Dorchester Tropes (2008–09), a four-movement piano solo; (4) In the Sea of Ionia (2007–08) a piece…
The Wind In High Places
The Wind in High Places is an elegant, haunting collection album containing three of John Luther Adams’s serenely powerful recent string works: (1) The Wind in High Places (2011), a three-movement string quartet commissioned to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Theodore Front Musical Literature, performed by JACK Quartet; (2) Canticles of the Sky, a four-movement piece for four cello choirs, performed by the 48-member Northwestern University Cello Ensemble, directed and conducted by Hans Jørgen …
The Descent Of Inanna
An over-stimulating immersive auditive dive with exceptional depth. Uruk carries the listener away within a phenomenal landscape of dark ambient and subterranean drones with constant rich textures generating an atmosphere of extraordinary intensity.This remarkable new musical endeavor is a joint effort by Massimo Pupillo (Zu) and Thighpaulsandra (Coil). Echoes of Coil music and Zu music appear here and there but the duo maps an uncharted territory. This is organic electronic music. A journey int…
Contrée
Unreleased before collection from French electroacoustician Régis Renouard Larivière. Contrée is an LP of quizzical, sometimes eerie voyages into unknown noise. "Allégeance Volatile" and "Esquive" each tackle the same issue in their own way. Overcoming time: whether it be successive, additional, enumerative, or repetitive. However, there is nothing here about the ensuing nature of so-called "repetitive" music. These are types of high-end music. And it is more about insistence, the obstinacy of a…
Home Age 2
One-time edition of 480. Eleh's Home Age series was composed and recorded over a period of five years and it reflects a search for color, form, connection, and growth. The handmade artwork contained in each package was created during the same period of time the music was composed and is an integral part of the meaning of Home Age. For this release, Eleh plays modular and analog synthesizers, piano, organ, bass, and symphonic chimes. Although Home Age is a two-part set, Eleh's upcoming Living Spa…
Remixed 01
After their highly-acclaimed debut album Decadent Yet Depraved (R-M 178CD/LP, 2018), Berlin and LA-based producers Belief Defect invited a variety of artists to join their Remixed project. Remixed 01 is about transferring the pieces back into abstract space, and each remixer does it in his very own way. Alessandro Cortini's one-take live recording is a lesson in classical ambient music. Telefon Tel Aviv's remix is timelessly modern and extremely delicate sound design. Rather opposite concepts ar…
Sileen II
2018 release **
"An adaptation from "Sileen", a composition commissioned by Musica For The Festival Oortreders at Neerpelt, Belgium, 2016 performed with 50 members of a local music school; "Sileen II" was realized with only Gareth Davis on bass clarinet plus sounds from Machinefabriek, recorded in the same pitch and tempo as "Sileen', then slowed to half its speed and one octave lower. Stunning!"
Auferstehung: Elektronische Musik aus Berlin 1983/1984
LP version. In 1983, electronic musician Rudolf Langer (Tyndall) and guitarist Peter Preuß teamed up to form a duo by the name of LAPRE (LAnger + PREuß). Aligned with the second generation of the Berlin School, their output is incredibly varied: from repetitive sequencer patterns via playfully cheerful synth pop all the way to atmospheric, hypnotic minor key expanses. It's all there. By 1984, LAPRE had released two tapes and a 12" vinyl. Bureau B's compilation presents the most compelling tracks…
Shared Meanings
individually stamped edition of 400 copies. This sampler 12” includes Mumdance & Logos’ massive
‘Teachers’ alongside zingers from Nkisi,Peder Mannerfelt, Caterina
Barbieri and Space Afrika. On a dance tip, Mumdance & Logos pay
tribute to a Chicago convention on ‘Teachers’, listing a roll-call of
influential UK artists, DJs, labels and clubs in a style most famously
deployed by Daft Punk, while Nkisi comes fiercely correct with the
swingeing Congolese techno rolige of ‘Kinega’, and Peder Ma…
Music By Xolotl
Edition of 500. First ever vinyl edition of the amazing Music By Xolotl, originally issued only on cassette by Unity Records in 1978. Painter and musician Bernard Xolotl was born in France in 1951. As a teen, he was introduced to electronic music through the works of musique concrete composers like Pierre Henry and Pierre Schaeffer, although he found the early recordings of Pink Floyd to be more inspirational.During the summer of 1970 while stopping in Belgium, he found a vast Library with rare …