Freak on Hashish / Longboarding Is a Crime
Snotty swansong from the hard-living punk, Sewn Leather, for Milan's excellent Hundebiss label. 'Freak On Hashish / Longboarding Is A Crime' commendably lives up to at least half its title (we're not what he's got against longboarding, but we're not arsed either way really) with nine blown out, sludgy misshapes that sound too wrecked to get up but still generate enough wretched energy to put off casual listeners and entice the hardcore. It starts up with the bombed-out hip hop bounce of 'Real Re…
Your True Emblem
Your True Emblem is the latest offering from Vancouver’s Cyrillic Typewriter, the enigmatic mantle of Jason Zumpano, joined here with fellow Destroyer alumna Scott Morgan (Loscil) and Nic Bragg, and recent recruit Terri Upton of Frog Eyes.
A Skeleton
Hailing from Suuns, Canadian Ben Shemie offers up his first solo work, ‘A Skeleton’ - an experimental pop album of cold synthetic sounds with touches of psychedelia. Based on his live, itinerant experiments, the whole album was recorded in a single take with no overdub. Shemie has left traces of the atmosphere of each recording space, adding an element of chaos and unpredictability alongside his masterful/dexterous manipulation of the equipment.The voices and instruments sound as if they were dr…
Foam Fangs
West Coast synth guru Jonas Reinhardt (aka Jesse Reiner) makes his 100% Silk debut with 'Foam Fangs', which sees the usually downtempo producer pushing things up a couple of notches. The cosmic Jarre-esque synthesizer washes are still present, but are bolstered with chest-punching 4/4 rhythms and rubbery looping sequences straight out of the 1987 house rulebook. Somehow this gives the EP the glow of Detroit-era pioneer Juan Atkins and muddles it with the Italo-laced fuzz of Johnny Jewel. It work…
Leak Project
Leak Project by Nicole Cecilie Bitsch Pedersen is an ultra minimal electronic compostions for Korg Polysix analogue synthesizer. Using The Korg Polysix analog synthesizer as the primary audio source in a number of compositions experimenting with controlled randomness, bass, high frequency sounds, rhythm vs. non-rhythm and error sounds. The pieces are bound together by their certain minimalist aesthetic and emphasis on the subtle detail, both present in the overall compositions and the individual…
Mineral Kingdom
The Parels is a duo of Jim Goodall and Eddie Ruscha from L.A. This LP is their second release after their self titled tape on Lal Lal Lal. Inside the grooves of this record they continue their strange exotica mission through the jungle and towards the mysterious grottos of the Mineral Kingdom. The trip is listened through a kaleidoscope: Small details and miniature symphonies change places and blend together, enchanting scenes morph into others. Limited edition of 300. Co-release with Ikuisuus.
Episodes
Edition of 300 copies, comes with riso printed insert featuring an interview with bloom offering. Bloom Offering is the synth-wave / blighted electronic project of seattle’s Nicole Carr. having released a handful of well-received cassettes through clan destine, aught void, and sinneslöschen, bloom offering presents her debut lp episodes through the helen scarsdale agency.In her development as an artist and technician, Carr has steadily honed her abilities in sculpting sharply cold electronics an…
Vergessene Träume
Edition of 250 copies. Johannes Schebler’s body of work released under his Baldruin moniker may not exactly be as groundbreaking as the old geezer’s from Königsberg, but it’s fair to point out that his discipline is comparably versed and experienced when it comes to making his music. During the years past he hardly ever left town, avoided exhausting and time consuming nonsense such as touring and instead stayed inside preparing and releasing over a dozen albums since his first recordings back in…
Frequencies
Edition of 200. This is the last release in the series of Nicolas Bernier’s worldwide
acclaimed and Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica awarded project
“frequencies”. The piece frequencies (a / archives) is a composition based on sounds
from the scientific archives of Rennes 1 University (France). This
impressive collection of antique scientific apparatus includes one of
the few remaining "Grand Diapason" built by Rudolph Koenig circa 1880.
The two gigantic forks of the Grand diapason can gen…
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…