Cinder : Ember : Ashes
Stunning solo debut albumfrom Melbourne based musician Aviva Endean. Aviva is a clarinet player, improviser, composer and performance-maker. Her work with sound spans a wide variety of performance contexts including experimental and improvised music, creating immersive sonic environments, new chamber music, band projects, and cross-disciplinary collaborations. Cinder : ember : ashes is Aviva’s first solo release and marks a move towards a more introspective sound. A collection of both composed a…
Memory Repetitions
**Limited Edition 5 x CD box**Operating outside the limelight in the underground, Will Long has produced prolifically across genres, monikers, and countries since 2006. Predating his minimal house contributions under his given name to DJ Sprinkles’ Comatonse label and Smalltown Supersound, Long has put forth over a hundred collections of ambient compositions in stream of consciousness fashion under the name Celer. A native to America, Long has been based in Tokyo since 2011, where he has continu…
The Pyre: Versions Distilled To Stereo
Stephen O’Malley & Peter Rehberg’s KTL find the darkest space between black metal and computer music - or presence and absence - with ‘The Pyre: versions distilled to stereo’; a score for french choreographer Gisèle Vienne. Continuing Shelter Press’s on-going documentation of Gisèle Vienne’s work after Stephen O’Malley’s 2015 score for her ‘Éternelle Idole’ piece, ‘The Pyre’ also sees Gisèle paired with Peter Rehberg for first time since his ‘Work For GV 2004-2008’ album, serving to tie up thei…
Limpid as the Solitude
Dreamlike second collaboration between Félicia Atkinson and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, a deeply affecting play of contrasting textures, densities and space that comes very highly recommended if you’re into Ryuichi Sakamoto’s collaborations with Alva Noto, La Monte Young, GRM’s 1970’s output, classic 4AD/Cocteau Twins, that incredible Autechre remix of Tortoise, or indeed Félicia Atkinson's scene stealing Hand In Hand album from last year...‘Limpid as the Solitudes’ is the steeply immersive second coll…
Hence
Hence is the third collaborative release from Oren Ambarchi and Jim O'Rourke, following on from Behold
(EMEGO 176LP, 2015). Building on the refined combination of electronics
and acoustic instrumentation found on their previous releases, Hence presents two side-long pieces combining synthesizers, heavily effected guitar tones, and tabla rhythms played by special guest Uzhaan.
On the first side, an explosive opening chord sends out ripples of
sparse, irregularly pulsing guitar and synthesizer…
Aanet
Ilpo Väisänen returns to Editions Mego under the guise of I-LP-ON with, ÄÄNET, an immense tribute to the outfit he played in alongside his friend and former creative partner Mika Vainio. ÄÄNET takes inspiration from the life of Pan Sonic, the outfit they inhabited for over two decades. Recorded in Kuopio, Barcelona and Karttula, ÄÄNET is made up of a series of miniatures that harness the many shadows this legendary act absorbed: industrial, ambient, dub and club all figure into this edgy slow bu…
Routine
Snapshot release by new Editions Mego signing, the Bristol-based Finlay Shakespeare. Routine is a twitchy electro monster confronting the listener with a worked up a blend of AFX, Cabaret Voltaire, and New Order.
The B-Side "Perris" propels itself as a crazed analog drama that is as
ambitious as it is unholy. Simultaneously a modern throwback to the
brooding synth pop age and an absolute belter in the contemporary
mainframe, Finlay Shakespeare has made it quite clear, that he is here.
Chronolyse
Bureau B present a reissue of Richard Pinhas's Rhizosphere, originally released in 1977. Richard Pinhas is one of the most important French electronic space rock musicians. Following five albums with his band Heldon, he released his first solo record in 1977. Backed by Heldon's congenial drummer François Auger but no longer bound by the group dynamic, he explores his freshly purchased Moog modular system in search of new sounds. It marked a departure into new realms. "We don't need new technique…
East West
Bureau B presents a reissue of Richard Pinhas's East West, originally issued in 1980. The fourth solo album by French spacerock mastermind Pinhas, East West was his first and only album to be released by a major label (CBS). Some say it is his most commercial but Pinhas doesn't see it that way. "Signing to CBS was a blessing. It gave me the tools for better production. At that time, some big companies were better and more honest than the so-called underground labels. Besides, I don't see any vir…
Eclipse
Black vinyl edition. Reissue of extremely rare kosmische/electronic/experimental/ambient album by Didier Bocquet, originally released in 1977 on his own Kiosque D'Orphe label, in 100 copies, each with a hand-drawn/written cover effort by the artist. Inspired by the first wave of german kosmische sound-travellers (Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream and the whole Berlin School spring inmediately to mind) but retaining that typical french urgency that places it close to Heldon / Pinhas, Lard Free or…
Ke I Te Ki
Room40 release Akio Suzuki and Aki Onda's Ke I Te Ki. "Akio Suzuki and I have been performing together frequently for the last five years; we have a tendency to perceive sound as space, or to always consider sound in relation to space. We don't usually hear sound sources as they actually are, since they are always modified by a space's acoustics and its reflections, absorptions, and attenuation. Sound is affected by the conditions and characteristics of a particular setting. We respond to the ex…
132 Ranks
132 Ranks for Pipe Organ was composed by Olivia Block in 2016-2017, as a commission for LAMPO and The Renaissance Society. Block composed the piece specifically for the enormous Skinner Organ at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel in Chicago. The world premiere was performed by Block on April 21, 2017. The concert, free and open to all ages attracted a large crowd. 132 Ranks was conceived as a hybrid of concert and sound installation. Six speakers were placed throughout the chapel. These speakers played…
Light Pipe
Unearth is the first solo recording from Australian born, Berlin based composer and drummer Tony Buck in 15 years. Many would recognize Buck from his work with the iconic Australia avant trio The Necks. His history as a player however reaches much further than this engagement. Over the past few decades, Tony has cultivated a language that escapes easy categorization. With Unearth, he delivers his most accomplished solo composition. Built across several years, the record is the culmination of his…
Illustrations For Those Who
Polish producer Tomasz Bednarczyk returns to Room40 with Illustrations For Those Who, his first full length edition in almost a decade. Across the late 2000s, Bednarczyk created a series of acclaimed ambient recordings that married the unsteadiness of archival technologies with an extensive palette of pastoral timbres. These recordings quietly set a particular tenor of work for a new generation of Middle Eastern European ambient composers. Following these recordings, however, Bednarczyk's energi…
At The Still Point Of The Turning World
Joana Gama and Luís Fernandes's new offering At The Still Point Of The Turning World, borrows its title from T. S. Eliot's poem "Burnt Norton". It is a record of restless motion, lilting and pulsing with a sense of gentle determination. Born out of a period of mutual loss, the works carry a bittersweet sentiment. Bitter in the sense of loss; sweet in the sense of lingering memory and influences recognized of those departed. It is also a record that, like the poem from which it takes its title, m…
Re-Verbed (No-Input Mixing Board 9)
Re-Verbed (No-Input Mixing Board 9) is the latest edition from Tokyo-based artist Toshimaru Nakamura. The "No-Input Mixing Board" is a unique instrument pioneered by Nakamura. As its name suggests, it is a mixing console within which external no input exists. The instrument is fueled only by its own feedback. Initially used by Nakamura as a more tonal instrument, creating incredibly high frequency outputs, over time the mixing board has become decidedly more rhythmic and harmonic. It is this son…
Love Songs
The music of Australian artist Thembi Soddell resides in a zone of unrelenting darkness and physical affect. Working at the nexus of raw emotion, sound design, and musique concrete, she creates sound worlds that are effortlessly dense and abyss-like. In her performances, she explores sonic environments which swallow the audience. By utilizing intense sound pressure and varying dynamics she creates profoundly unsettling, but fulfilling, experiences for her audiences. Love Songs, her latest work, …
Indelicate Slices
All is lost, all is lost. Or is it? A poignant question from Pinkcourtesyphone. A haunting strain. A coat of gloss smeared. A scene recalled, a fond memory, a terrible lie in this new dark age of love. Suspended in that lush, lonely feeling, Pinkcourtesyphone implores you to hang breathless on the line, above the chandeliers in shimmering stasis that belie those desperate, shadowy passions underneath. A creak, a glance. Nothing is for certain anymore. That sentimental something echoed across cor…
Unearth
Unearth is the first solo recording from Australian born, Berlin based composer and drummer Tony Buck in 15 years. Many would recognize Buck from his work with the iconic Australia avant trio The Necks. His history as a player however reaches much further than this engagement. Over the past few decades, Tony has cultivated a language that escapes easy categorization. With Unearth, he delivers his most accomplished solo composition. Built across several years, the record is the culmination of his…
Smoke Under The Water
"I confess to being in a state of ceaseless awe when it comes to Tokyo guitarist, Ueno Takashi. I have had the pleasure to know Ueno now for well over ten years. In that time he has remained a source of constant curiosity and surprise. Just when I think I have the man pegged, he throws out some unexpected musical gesture that completely catches me off guard. Whether it be his work with Saya in Tenniscoats, or his almost endless stream of solo releases, many of which exist in very short run editi…