The Slaughterhouse
In rural Alabama, about an hour outside of Birmingham is a slaughterhouse. It’s a family operation where meat is processed one animal at a time by hand. Mostly custom jobs. A man and his son run the place. They handle most aspects of the daily operations from customer relations to animal processing. I first visited on a Friday with my wife. We hung out while they cut and packaged a side of beef. They said I could come back on Monday to record the whole process, which I did. On the day I recorded…
Helgoland
Germany’s only ocean island is a singular place in various ways. Situated 70 kilometers from the coast line, it belonged to the UK for 90 years during the 19th century. During World War II, the first facilities for a huge naval base were erected. The tunnels and bunkers from that time were blown up in 1947. In the following years, the island served as a training area for British bombers. It is not know how the birds have survived this period of destruction. Yet, by the return of people to the de…
Terra Subfonica
As a composer and sound artist often working closely at the nexus of radiophonic art, environmental sound and electroacoustic music, one of my primary interests is in the exploration of relationships between people and the incredibly rich sonorous environments they populate. In particular, the sounds that exist all around us, however that are often out of earshot (or at least not listened to in any conscious manner), as with the sounds beneath us as we tend our daily lives. Terra subfónica is a …
Bug Music
There has been rhythm on this planet for millions of years longer than humans have opened their mouths to sing. Long before birds, long before whales, insects have been thrumming, scraping, and drumming complex beats out into the world.
David Rothenberg decided to investigate the resounding beats of cicadas, crickets, katydids, leafhoppers and water bugs in his unusual third foray into music made with and out of the animal world. After working with birds and whales, he now tackles the minute …
East Music for Wax Cylinders
Erich Moritz von Hornbostel was an „armchair ethnologist“. Due to his bad health the musicologist was unable to travel to faraway countries. Instead he sat at his desk in the Dorotheenstraße in Berlin and received the world through his phonograph. On from 1900 the world’s music arrived at his office in the form of more than 16.000 wax-cylinder recordings from all over the planet. Due to an edict by the Prussian Emperor all German trading as well as scientific expeditors were bound to travel with…
Morne diablotins
What did the Caribbean islands – acoustically- look like before the arrival of Columbus? With this question in mind I took a short trip to the National Park of Guadeloupe and to Dominica, one of the most preserved island of the Lesser Antilles, which still retains some of its primary forest on the slopes of its volcanic peaks. I crossed the paths of the ‘Jaco’ and ‘Sisserou’ (the endemic species of parrots), met some local insects and tree frogs, but unfortunately failed to find any ‘Mountain Ch…
Terra Prosodia
- Currently about 6000 languages are spoken on the world. Most of them will disappear soon – and together with them a meldodic richness of human expressivness. However, the fact, that dialects and disappearing languages are only spoken by a few people has one advantage: only if one does not understand the contents it is possible to really listen tot he sound, saying far away from their homeland these languages unfold their musical enchantment (charme?). What you find are melodies that nobody …
The impossible humane
Recorded from 1984 to 1986, The Impossible Humane is the sole album by The New Blockaders side project Mixed Band Philanthropist. Originally released on the German Selektion label in 1987 and impossible to find nowadays, Staubgold makes this rare gem of Industrial goes Musique Concrete available again in a strictly limited edition of 400 copies. Furthermore the reissue contains two bonus tracks taken from the 7 single The Man Who Mistook A Real Woman For His Muse And Acted Accordingly. The album…
Yann Gourdon
First solo from Yann Gourdon playing hurdy gurdy with the trio France. A huge sound continuum. A great moment of sound ! Highly recommended ! 300 copies in a silkscreen cover.
Escarpments
Kraig Grady is a composer and a sound artist. He has been described by David Toop as an Ethnographic Surrealist. Born in California in 1952 (of Ojibwe Indian ascent), he is now residing in Australia. It is our desire to represent here the various ways in which both the music and the escarpments of Anaphoria form bonds in a variety of settings. Widely recognized by even recent immigrants, Anaphoria is known as a place where the land just feels different than other places. To capture these sensati…
Ancestors
Styles Upon Styles follow that ace BAT single with three stealthy, motorik techno mutations from Mexico City's White Visitation. 'Permanent Swing' synchs swirling machine patter and rolling square bass as a tentative opener for the tight, latinate shuffle groove and subtly ascendent chord and guitar slivers of the Moritz Von Oswald-esque 'Home', and 'Blood Revision' cruises out on a gauzy autobahn/highway tip coming off like a technoid cousin of Willie Burnett's Black Deer gear.
Domino
Dukes of Chutney is John Paul Jones and Dustin Lynn, California born brothers from other cosmic mothers who met surfing over a decade ago. The flavor of the Dukes musical chutney is an abstract but balanced mixture of many disciplines. Under the moniker Tom Croose, Jones has established a beguiling production touch to various edits and remixes. Lynn is an accomplished filmmaker who has collaborated with artist Gabriel Orozco and directed campaigns for designers Alexander McQueen and Corto Mol…
Versions
Grandly orchestrated versions of highlights from the Zola Jesus back catalogue, arranged by none other than classically trained industrial survivor JG Thirlwell (aka Foetus, aka Manorexia). Conceived for a performance at New York’s Guggenheim Museum at the climax of her Conatus world tour, these tremulous string settings are really what Nika Roza Danilova’s tender but polished vocals have always been begging for, and the sensitivity and focus of Thirlwell’s charts, beautifully realised by the Mi…
No. 2
Developed over a four year period, and entirely funded by a part time job working as a SAT university entrance exam mathematics tutor, Nº2 was composed using synthesizers and a variety of unidentiï¬ÂÂÂed samples that were manipulated beyond recognition. Christina Vantzou then collaborated with Minna Choi of the San Francisco based Magik Magik Orchestra. Vantzou and Choi worked on the notation and arrangements and recorded the compositions with a 15-piece ensemble at Tiny Telephone studios in S…
The Blackout
Thrill Jockey seem to be snapping up lots of underground faves, Barn Owl, Eternal Tapestry, Wooden Shjips, Sun Araw, and now Tunnels. For several years, Tunnels has been the moniker for the solo output of Nicholas Bindeman. Over time Bindeman's sound has evolved from the slow, breathing landscapes of his earlier ambient/drone releases (Colour Seance, Vexations) to completely fried-out bedroom psych explorations (Astral Collage, In Between Dreams). The Blackout delves into a world of sound un…
Belomancie
Sun Araw yields his most cryptic glyph to date with 'Belomancie' for Drag City. Replete with a recommendation "to give 'Belomancie' your full attention, and to listen at the highest volume that is comfortable on high quality speakers with a pronounced stereo field or on an excellent pair of headphones", it's the most cerebral and focussed effort we've yet heard from Cameron Stallones', acutely contrasting with his looser, noisier psychedelic dub excursions. Its predominantly electronic palette a…
Ganymede
Inspired in equal measure by the throbbing urbanity of coastal cities, continental European art-rock experimentation, left-ï¬Ã‚Âeld techno, and the freewheeling punk aesthetic of contemporary home studio recording, Jonas Reinhardt’s music transcends its inï¬Ã‚‚uences to bring into being a work that’s wholly new while referencing a celebrated aesthetic of the past. Jonas Reinhardt's 'Ganymede' is an experimental science ï¬Ã‚Âction ï¬Ã‚Âlm set on the solar system's largest moon. On Ganymede, i…
Music from Computer
Music From Computer is an exquisite repackaging of influential works from early computer music Jean-Claude Risset, spanning the years 1968 – 1985. It illuminates a fascinating intersection between old-world classicism, musique concrete, and synthesis. Recollection GRM presents computer works from French composer Jean-Claude Risset. "Sud" (1985): This work was commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture, from a project initiated by the GRM, where it was produced circa 1984-1985. The piece m…
Traces Two
2014 repress, Recollections GRM presents four "forgotten" and compelling electro-acoustic pieces from the institute's world famous archive. Recollection GRM, a label within the Editions Mego family of labels, offers a second selection from the vast archives of Groupe De Recherches Musicales (GRM). "The idea of the Traces series is to unearth from the GRM Archives short, forgotten, or ignored pieces of music. This second volume, which gathers works prior to 1976, features the 'early' works of f…
Traces One
Another indispensable glimpse into the GRM archive courtesy of the mighty Editions Mego, 2014 repress. Beatriz Ferreyra's "L' Orvietan" (1970) is a work composed of two separate movements, the first drawing from electronic sounds, the second from concrète ones. These two sources do not meet, but tend equally towards sound antagonism and a complementarity of spirit. Philippe Carson Turmac's (1961) was created from machine-sounds from the Stuyvesant factories (Holland). Three movements foll…