Electronomusic, 9 Images
Much in the way I was confounded by Rod “A Safe Place to Land” McKuen’s forays into noise-oriented electronic music - see: Heins Hoffman-Richter, “Symphony for Tape Delay, IBM Instruction Manual, & OHM Septet," aka "Music to Freak your Friends and Break your Lease” - this set of “Electronomusic” by RCA-Victor “Living Stereo” architect - he recorded the vast majority of the legendary classical label’s productions, working with Van Cliburn, Heifetz, Horowitz, Leontyne Price, Fritz Reiner, Toscan…
Cai-Bem
“Cai-Bem” is a splendid addition to the already extensive discography of David Maranha. It is also the first full-length vinyl LP in Tanuki Records’catalogue. There is a story behind this new album, although you would not guess what it is, unless told. Keen to explore new ways of playing, as he has done during his whole career since he began playing with his band Osso Exotico in the 1980’s, Maranha suggested that they should all play other instruments that their regular ones. He himself …
Music for Commercials
Originally issued by Crammed in 1987, this is one of the most sought-after releases in the legendary Made to Measure series. Known for his numerous albums, soundtracks, and collaborations with an impossibly broad array of artists (from Ryuichi Sakamoto and DJ Towa Tei to Van Dyke Parks, Björk, Manu Dibango and Elvin Jones), composer, saxophonist and producer Yasuaki Shimizu also released several electronic music productions during the '80s, which are currently generating a lot of interest (…
Body Consonance
Body Consonance is the follow up to Precipice, Byron Westbrook’s critically acclaimed debut LP from 2015 (Root Strata).Taking a turn towards greater immediacy, this new album is far from “ambient” with ecstatic abstract rhythm as its anchor. An artist who also operates in visual contexts, Westbrook utilizes binaural qualities of the stereo listening format to sculpt three-dimensional sounds in perpetual motion, producing works that are both pointillistic and psychedelic. Body Consonance is …
Spirit Design
Only a year after his debut solo album with Hands in the Dark, Brian Case is back this August with Spirit Design. The record consists of ten new experimental tracks of concrete dub and electronic wizardry. This sophomore solo record is drastically different from the Chicagoan’s first opus, Tense Nature. Case has added vocals and more beats to his compositions, putting together an album that promises and lends itself to a loud, moving live experience. Although in ways it is more experimenta…
Bring On The Sun
A collection of brand new Laraaji studio recordings, recorded by Davey Jewell (Peaking Lights/Flaming Lips) and mixed by Carlos Niño (Leaving Records). A magical mixtape of tracks that run the full gamut of ‘Laraaji music’, from blissed-out percussive jams to reflective vocal hymnals to trance-inducing drones. A perfect Laraaji entry-point on his never-ending creative journey through inner light. Laraaji is a musician, mystic and laughter meditation practitioner based in New York City. He began …
Sun Gong
New age pioneer Laraaji summons celestial energies thru radiant gong meditations alloyed with modular synth and vocals to immersive effect. It’s really not as optimistic as you might expect, but does seem to follow a narrative arc from chaotic mystic darkness to a more positive, chiming conclusion in its 25 minute duration. An intriguing addition to his catalogue, which takes another smart turn with his upcoming album, Bring On The Sun.
Stoned - An Electronic Symphony
Official re-issue of Danish electronic music from 1974! Vinyl LP comes with booklet and limited to 500 copies - no repress. Frederiksberg Records announces the first re-issue of ‘Stoned’ which is exclusively licensed from Gunner Møller Pedersen in person and has been carefully restored from the original master tapes. It comes with a booklet of liner notes by Thomas Knak. ‘Stoned’ by Gunner Møller Pedersen is a pioneering partly-electronic composition from Denmark. Gunner believes that it’s m…
Film Works
As part of the 2016 festival Night of the Experimental Film, French duo Opéra Mort (= Èlg + Fusiller) performed a live soundtrack for two films that centre on the paradoxical symbiosis of love and death: The Potted Psalm by Sidney Peterson and James Broughton, and Dream Work by Peter Tscherkassky. Both films convey love and death as both direct opposites and kindred concepts, turning to cryptic surrealism, poetic hallucinations and flickering alternations between flesh and ecstatic abstraction. …
Kulthan
Extended hypnotic explorations from Brooklyn’s experimentalist Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe (Lichens, OM). Two long-side pieces of futuristic afro-dub, slowly evolving arrangements of voice and modular synthesizer soundscapes. Ethereal and melancholic on the first side with Magnamite, exhibiting 'the relationship of machine and human, showcasing the coupling of the two instruments'. Drifting and wildly pulsating on Heart of Sogguth that 'transforms this relationship into a unified human machin…
Kondens
This is a selection of previously unreleased tracks created at home by Enrico Serotti (fmember of Confusional Quartet and Stupid Set), without any purpose other than the fun of playing with new musical devices. The tracks date from 1983 to 1999. A pretty long time span, coinciding with the transition from analog to digital technology. Cover Art by Alessandro Pessoli.
Homemade Music Vol. II (1983-1999)
This is a selection of previously unreleased tracks created at home by Enrico Serotti (fmember of Confusional Quartet and Stupid Set), without any purpose other than the fun of playing with new musical devices. The tracks date from 1983 to 1999. A pretty long time span, coinciding with the transition from analog to digital technology. Cover Art by Alessandro Pessoli.
Live on the Boffomundo Show
By October 1979, Aaron Weiner and Ron Curtiss had produced a handful of Boffomundo Shows at Los Angeles' first public access television studio at Theta Cable in Santa Monica. Joined by eventual partner Tony Harrington of All Ears Records, The All Ears Boffomundo Show was born!
Tony Harrington introduced legendary synthesizer master, Fumio Miyashita, founder of The Far East Family Band (space-rockers considered to be Japan's first prog band!), to the show and the rest is history. Fumio brought mu…
Alien Wildlife Estate
Drone Grand Maester Spencer Clark teams up with Finnish toy-wizard Jan Anderzen (Tomutonntuu / Kemialliset Ystavat) to create psychedelic magic. You just need the guy from The Skaters and one really out-there Finnish dude to make sure you get the best kind of weird there is. Animal calls pierce the layer hypnotic synths, drowned by tiny bells engorged by fuzzy delay and reverb pedals to evolve into alien laments from a different dimension. With its bubbling baselines, boiling percussion an…
Pinhead in Fantasia
Esoteric synths and classical harmonies from The Skaters mastermind. Pinheads in Fantasia is probably Spencer Clark's most out-there endeavor. At some point his records became more than just trippy music with crazy artwork and his use of symbols and poetry started to take a more central part in the releases. He even stopped calling them albums, preferring the term soundvisions instead. Fourth World Magazine Vol. II is the culmination of these tendencies, sounding like the creation myth for …
Tres Precieux Sang
*2017 repress* Terrific record! Eight charged, intimate meditations by Julie Normal and Olivier Demeaux, playing a rickety ondes Martenot and an old church harmonium. Gripping, detailed, stately improvisation -- a bit like the ùrlars in classical bagpipe music -- which nervily mixes the sternly doom-laden with precarious, other-worldly wonderment. (The ondes Martenot is an amazing twentieth-century instrument -- beloved by Messiaen, for example, and Varese. The theme-song of Star Trek is a voca…
Die Nacht Der Seele
‘Die nacht der seele’ is the twelfth album by Popol Vuh, originally released in 1979 by Florian Fricke and friends–Daniel Fichelscher on guitar, Djong Yun and Renate Knaup on vocals, plus guests Alois Gromer on sitar and Susan Goetting on oboe. Popol Vuh had moved again one step farther, ellaborating a complex world music opus based mainly on acoustic instruments plus Fichelscher's electric guitar and the use of multitracked vocals to reproduce the sounds of Tibetan monk chants.‘Florian was and …
The Newest Historic Site
Bersabea is a collaboration between Niko-Matti Ahti and Birgir Örn Jónsson. The music follows an open-ended inquiry. Improvisations, samples, voices, field recordings and other aural flotsam gets collaged into bite-size pop donuts, and vice versa. Niko-Matti and Birgir live in different countries in the northern hemisphere. The music is stitched together somewhere in between. Nothing is premeditated, nothing is arbitrary. Everything is playful, joy and terror abound. The Newest Historic Site is …
Kehä
The sounds on this record have been created with feedback, by having a signal circle around a previously set route again and again. What seems empty at first draws a line as it moves, starts playing around and becomes something completely different. The nature of the sound changes in unexpected ways when one alters the parameters at different points of the loop. On this record the individual sounds play at different time scales and different speeds, which are defined according to the ratios of w…
Dream Theory in Malaya: Fourth World Vol. Two
First reissue of Jon Hassell's "Fourth World" masterpiece, originally released in 1981. Featuring contributions from Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois (U2, Peter Gabriel), and Michael Brook (Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan). Beautifully remastered, with a bonus track ("Ordinary Mind") and liner notes written by Hassell himself. "Fourth World is a viewpoint out of which evolves guidelines for finding balances between accumulated knowledge and the conditions created by new technologies" --Jon Hassell. From his …