House
CD edition, 'House' is the 2nd official full-length offering by Cleveland, Ohio duo MIST featuring Sam Goldberg (of Radio People) and John Elliott (Emeralds, Outer Space, Imaginary Softwoods etc) after 2009's self-titled debut effort on Amethyst Sunset. A suite consisting of 7 complex, layered compositions shows new progression in composition and melody from the duo. From the lightning fast, bittersweet crescendo of 'Twin Lanes' to the dramatic chord progressions of 'I Can Still Hear Your Voice'…
Tourbillon D'Obscurité
Philippe Petit is interested in soundtracks; even if he creates original music he'd rather be introduced as a "musical travel agent" than a composer. Petit uses a Cymbalum, an Electric Psalterion, computer and synths to build up electronic layers, process acoustic and field recordings.
To second the machines he likes to move various glasses,
or percussive objects, and take advantage of vinyl material to fondle released sounds. A journalist for various magazines and radio as well as a musical ac…
Modes reels collectifs
Modes réels collectifs is the first work published in 1981 under the Vivenza banner, following Jean-Marc Vivenza's time with the bands Glace (1976) and Mécanique Populaire (1979). It represents a genuine manifesto that would become emblematic of all Vivenza's subsequent work. By suggesting, from philosophical and sonic points of view, an idea of opening to the reality directly inspired from Futurist theories, Vivenza was presenting what he had brought from his relationship with machines and soun…
1000
This 45 rpm 12'' called « 1000 » is a collection of Roxy's unreleased New Wave and synth-infused tracks still signed by her oh so particular voice. Sometimes punchy, sometimes languorous and velvety, a common point all the tracks have is a strength that seems never to leave her. Also noticeable is the reprise of the mythical and mysterious synth-pop band Nine Circles, who else better than Roxy could tell us « What's There Left »?.
Whiter than white
The title Whiter than white sounds like an advert for soap. Adverts and soap are precisely what Les Belles Noïseuses blame. Or even more precisely what they represent: consumption, conformity, economic liberalism. However, don't expect to get a speech from Les Belles Noïseuses. Only feelings, emotions, dreams and nightmares are conveyed through their refined musical structure. The doom-jazz double-bass reminds the best from Mick Karn. The minimalist guitar scrapes melody to the bone, to the aton…
Deconstructing hank
I wanted to share Hank with a world that was unfamiliar with him and unable to grasp the despair, hurt and loneliness that he lived, unable to absorb the words or the sentiment, unable to hear the words, “Like a piece of driftwood on the sea, may you never be alone like me”. I asked Derek Rush if he would be interested in doing Hank Williams songs with me, he put them in a minor key and arranged them while I re-interpreted the melody and sang the words of Hank Williams, adding my g…
As a Leaf or a Stone
For this release Mathieu Ruhlmann uses a lot of sound sources and per track he lists them. We see listed a coffee grinder, ukelin, e-bow, moss, denture cleaner, bubble wrap, dried plant, cactus, speaker and gate (and that's just the opening track!)... The gain is very much alive here, so there is occasionally some feedback leaking through here. That adds a strange component to the highly acoustic music. Ruhlmann plays his stuff with great care. His music is open, spacious, but also intimate. The…
And That
Sub Rosa presents an LP-only collaborative release between New York visual artist, photographer, and film artist Peter Downsbrough and Xavier Garcia-Bardon and Benjamin Franklin, two members of Buffle -- a Brussels-based improv collective. The work of visual artist, photographer and film artist Peter Downsbrough has had a major impact on the perception of art. In the early-'60s, Downsbrough interrupted his studies in architecture at the University of Cincinnati and Cooper Union in New York i…
Phi
First meeting of experimental musicians Keith Rowe & Radu Malfatti in a 3 disc set: one disc of compositions by Jurg Frey and Cornelius Cardew; one disc of their own compositions; and one disc of improvisation. Keith Rowe and Radu Malfatti are two of the most influential experimental musicians in recent decades, each with extensive bodies of highly distinctive work and a combined 80+ years at the forefront of their respective areas of exploration. On Φ, their first meeting ever is documented via…
Post
Post is the solo guise for James Wilkinson, who has gleefully cracked the ground between free jazz and punk in Bucketrider and made sonic cinema with the electro-dub-hip-hop fusion of High Pass Filter. He’s also provided innovative sound design as director for the internationally acclaimed Snuff Puppets, and his adventurous spirit runs free through Post’s pop persona. It’s the same ecstatic abandon shared by the likes of Mouse on Mars, Plaid and Caribou. Post’s playful but stirring sense of comp…
Motion - Movement In Australian Sound
Motion – Movement In Australian Sound is a generous, 2-CD overview of 22 artists representing Australia’s burgeoning terrain of electronic and experimental music. From Scott Horscroft’s mesmerising piece for eleven guitars, the sublimely sweet, driving tones of Pretty Boy Crossover, Sue Harding’s melodies from dot matrix printers to renown veteran Alan Lamb’s awe-inducing casting of field recordings from the West Australian outback, Motioncasts wide to expose some of the most creative and …
Everything's A Love Letter
Saddleback is the solo project for producer Tony Dupé. In many ways, with its warm and exploratory craft, Everything’s A Love Letter is the culmination of the varying strands in Tony’s musical life.Tony first came to notice in Glovebox, who put an ethereal, ambient twist on the indie-pop scene as far back as the early ‘90s. Glovebox’s swirling sound has been as unhurried as its release schedule, though no matter how spare their output, each album has always found a warm reception. The group were…
From here to there
The Preservation label presents From Here To There, the debut album from San Francisco’s Ben Swire. While From Here To There can sit snugly in the canon of electronica, it’s played out with expansive vision and immediate warmth. Woven together with a deft sense of minimalism and melody using double bass, interlocking guitars and crisp percussion, the use of live instrumentation against densely layered field recordings finds great balance between elasticity and deep ambient underpinnings. The acc…
Asleep, street, pipes, tones (2009)
“Asleep, street, pipes, tones (2009) is an investigation of the sounding properties of pipes and streets interspersed with a duo for bass clarinet and electric guitar. The investigations form ten three-minute episodes, assembled in studio by Pisaro from samples—mostly organ, but also tiny snippets of vocal music and a single piano chord—and field recordings. The instrumental parts, arranged in nine sections, also three minutes each, develop over the course of the 63’40” duration of the pi…
En Form For Bla
Stephen O'Malley (Sunn0))), KTL), Daniel O'Sullivan (Ulver, Mothlite, Guapo), Kristoffer Rygg (Ulver), Steve Noble (N.E.W., Company, etc). En Form For Blå documents the continued evolution of this unlikely collective, a collision of players from various avant, improv, metal, and "other" threads who together make a unique and arresting sound. Documenting three gigs in Oslo recorded in 2010, the music is deep and weird, with liquid sounds juddering around the occasionally identifiable percussion o…
Life coach
‘Life Coach’ is the debut solo album from Phil Manley (of Trans Am, Oneida, The F*cking Champs, Jonas Reinhardt). This instrumental album will certainly appeal to fans of the aforementioned bands as well as those into the classic works of Kraftwerk, Neu!, and Harmonia as well as modern Kosmische / ambient music from the likes of Arp, Mountains, The Alps and Type Records. The CD version comes in a four panel mini-LP style gatefold package. (Boomkat)
A Sort Of Radiance
Matthew Mullane is a Chicago multi-instrumentalist performing under the guise of Fabric. Here we have a fine suite of compositions which embark on a voyage through darkness of night and the brightness of day. Washed-out dark colors and static pulses sweep across your stereo painting a portrait of intense yearning and determination. Recorded over the course of a year, Matthew has constructed a multi-dimensional organism of sound that has perplexing depth and astounding detail. The album reveals n…
Super great love
Evil madness has been described as the Traveling Wilburys of Icelandic electronic music. Behind the name stand men like Petur Eyvindsson, Johann Johannsson, Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson, Helgi Thorsson and BJ Nilsen (who is not "quite" Icelandic but was born in a country "very" near Iceland). This album, "Super Great Love", presented by Editions Mego will be their 4th album since the time their formation in 2006. Now for those of you reading who know the music of Evil Madness will know for sure th…
Progression
Featuring members of Pelican & X-Bax. For the new album three single-chord compositions were charted out, one freeform and tone driven, one long-form piece with charts dictating the players' intensity of performance, and one grid-like chart where each players' note continually shifts, though the combination of voices continue to maintain the chord. Six chords were chosen and arranged in a progression that encompasses two separate performances of each of the three compositions. Though the…
Fathom
Saxophonist and composer Ulrich Krieger is already widely respected for having been a part of the incredible Zeitkratzer and having collaborated with Merzbow. However this fifty-minute composition is possibly his most striking to date. A collaborative effort with Alan Licht, Tim Barnes and Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo, 'Fathom' is a deep, doomy exercise in patience and subtlety. With stark, minimal percussion and a bleak, haunted soundscape punctuated by Krieger's blackened woodwind tones th…