Day Of The Demons
Through the unending fog and beyond the impassable door, a voice emerges. Charlemagne Palestine, writhing in uncontrollable terror, moves to ward off the demons for the sake of the listener by howling through the void. Janek Schaefer bellies a haven, a cocoon for the listener to hide in, to grasp some semblance of life that remains and hold on to it dearly. Bells chime ominously to help dispel the haunting and are yet another stark reminder of the impending doom. What hath wrought them? What can…
Spielt Noise Boys
This is one of the most essential minimal synth wave projects, originally issued in 1980. After that, Stephan Eicher would form the band Grauzone. As a child, particularly with his little brother Martin, Stephan used a multi-track ("made in Eicher" by connecting several cassette machines together) to record little audio theater pieces. He would later organize Dada happenings and concerts, together with a small group of friends who called themselves the Noise Boys. In addition to Stephan on …
V
Finally the fifth KTL studio album is ready for release. Whereas their previous album IV (EMEGO 089CD) was recorded and made in a relatively short period in a more traditional rock environment, V turns full circle, takes its time and tackles the complex working processes of the European avant-garde. Rooting themselves in such legendary electronic music studios such as EMS in Stockholm and GRM in Paris, Stephen O'Malley (SunnO))), Khanate, etc.) and Peter Rehberg (Pita, etc.) have delivered …
Tables and Stairs
How does music happen, and why does it happen sometimes? In June 2010, the TOT1.0 festival took place in Athens, small steps towards a greater affirmation of the small music community that has been blossoming in the hell-hole that is Greece’s capital. As part of the festival, two foreign improvisers (Ferran Fages and Grundik Kasyansky) were invited to take part in the proceedings. While we were at it, we got notice that Robin Hayward also happened to be in town during those days, for unre…
Bitche Session
Musical expression comes in many forms and shapes, something that also applies to what we refer to as “experimental” music. That particular music receives its name usually because of its exploration of unusual shapes, colours, structures, etc, but sometimes it ends up even surrendering itself to entirely new languages and the possibilities those bring with them. It’s a taste of the latter that we find in this particular recording by the American Michael Johnsen, and Frenchman Pascal Battu…
Stroke by stroke
On Stroke by Stroke, the windows in Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga’s house are thrown open; you can hear the streets of Athens enlaced in her apothegmatic pieces for a radically prepared and refashioned zither. Knowing this, anyone even somewhat alert to the events in the streets of Athens from May of 2010 to the present, almost precisely the period of time bracketing the home recordings heard on Stroke by Stroke, will inevitably bend their ear for aural evidence of the crisis and conflagr…
Mimus / Skua
This split-in-two-sides cassette pairs two greek artists’ responses on the subject of birdsong. Some time ago Nicolas Malevitsis (of absurd fame) asked them to contribute a piece each, on the sole premise that the work would be based, or derive from, bird sounds. Unan (aka Chris Chondropoulos) brought back a curious collage work called ‘mimus’, built from the sounds and textures of scratchy vinyl culled over time by the artist from athens’ record shops. Focusing on structure and reflecting avian…
Fighting!
Alexander Moskos is a seasoned Canadian avant-garde musician active in projects such as Alterity Problem with Joel Taylor and the legendary Thames, who had an incredible 7" release on American Tapes in late 2011. Drainolith, his solo guise, has been active since the mid-'90s but has remained relatively under-the-radar with mysterious private press cassette and CD-R releases. In 2009, Moskos picked up a heavy U.S. tour regiment and caught the attention of U.S. underground heads with impressiv…
Vagabond
2013-05-25Brand new full length from Golden Cup featuring a new expanded 4 piece (Luca Massolin, Maurizio Abate and France band). Vagabond features 3 tracks, the opening 15 minute tracks takes up the full A side with wild psychedelic percussion and floating riffs, it's one hell of a jam. The B side features two shorter pieces, the first which are totally tranced out tribal percussive pieces, it sound nuts. The closing tracks is the perfect blend of the previous two tracks, crazy percussion…
Dune Church
Debut collaborative release from Manuel Padding and Steve Gunn (GHQ). Steve plays guitar with effects and Manuel is on electronics, vocals and percussion. Dune Church comprises of two tracks, The Original Mind Roti being the first with some beautiful playing from Steve which is reminiscent of his solo work and his GHQ collaborations with Marcia Bassett, but layered with Manuel's electronics, which fluctuate between psychedelic hazes to almost concrete walls of heavy drones at noises at ti…
Night Of Raining Fire
Sold out at source. Solange Gularte (Natural Snow Buildings) returns for her second solo LP for Blackest Rainbow. A dreamy psychedelic haze of shimmering drones, minimal string plucking with barely-there vocals, Gularte's sound is somewhat more far out in comparison to say Twinsistermoon or Natural Snow Buildings. Night Of Raining Fire showcases this with tracks like the almost medieval sounding Still Voyager, or the outsider folk sound of Nadirs of the Sun. The record comes packaged in a stunni…
Early Astral
Chris Forsyth has recently been touring around Europe with his Paranoid Cat Band in support of their excellent LP on Family Vineyard as well as playing with Meg Baird on her recent record and a continuing member of the Peeesseye. Koen Holtkamp plays as part of Thrill Jockey's Mountains, as well as releasing solo material on aformentioned Thrill Jockey and Type. On Early Astral Forsyth and Holtkamp team up, playing guitar and synthesizer and modular electronics respectively. The record consists t…
Menagerie # 3
Jake Blanchard's third volume of Menagerie finally shows up just over a year after #2... The concept this time is slightly different, not only do the artists create imagery based on the musicians music, but this time the musicians also create a track based on an image created by the artist. Two exclusive new tracks from each of these artists: Ben Nash, Isengrind, C Joynes and Twinsistermoon. And exclusive new artwork by Jim Stoten, Simon Fowler, Adrianne Neil and Jake Blanchard. The sleeve is a …
Oh Lordy Me! (My Heart Is Wandering Again)
250 copies. It's been quite some time since a full length solo Ben Nash release, and it's finally here, and somewhat different from his more psychedelic folk drones he showcased way back on 'The Seventh Goodbye'. Probably best left for Ben to explain this one for you... "I recorded this new full-length record during downtime from playing with Chora and after a long break from recording any solo music. Having become somewhat disillusioned with the process of overdubbing conventional “physical” in…
Occlusions
… Occlusion is a loose framework for a multi-channel, freely improvised piece of LIVE ELECTRONIC MUSIC, performed without the aid or consent of pre-recorded or even pre-arranged materials of any kind. A given realization will last between 10 and 30 minutes ; time is elastic. Every effort has been made to avoid divisible rhythms (although mistakes are occasionally made) ... Still, I consider it a "kind" of Dance Music. These two realizations, recorded a week apart at festivals in France and…
Repercussions
This is Robert Hampson’s 2nd solo album under his own name. Released as a special Stereo CD and 5.1 Surround DVD. Répercussions : An Acousmatic multi channel piece commissioned by the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) in Paris for a performance the Akousma festival, diffused on the Acousmonium speaker system in 2011. Recordings of percussive intruments of all kinds - Piano, Drum skins, Gamelan, Metal grates etc are treated and manipulated to form a dense nonlinear or non rhythmical narr…
Granulations-Sillages / Franges du Signe
Another remarkable reissue from the hallowed GRM (Groupe de Recherche Musciales) archive in Paris - home to some of the world's most fascinating, advanced electronic music research. The 2nd GRM Recollection was realised in 1974 and 1976 by Guy Reibel (1936, Strasbourg, France), the first assistant to Pierre Schaeffer during his electroacoustic composition courses at the Conservatoire de Paris and a member of GRM from 1963 to 1983. Housed in sleeve designed by Stephen O'Malley,. Cut to vin…
Motion Sickness Of Time Travel
DOUBLE CD EDITION In 2010, Rachel Evans released Seeping Through The Veil Of The Unconscious, an expansive, magic trick of a cassette which captivated an unsuspecting American cassette underground and made dedicated fans instantly. Digitalis released fine editions of Seeping... as well as the acclaimed follow-up Luminaries And Synastries on LP which packed an equally potent punch and created much anticipation. Evans has since been hard at work on an expansive, definitive 2LP project, caref…
Fancies, forbearance
Fancy: a 17th century term generally describing a composition in which form is of secondary importance. Fancies were usually contra-puntal and in several sections. (The Oxford Dictionary of Music)Fancies (2009) served to reconcile previously unsettled material, based upon a scheme that condones disparity between its constituent parts. In the period since its completion, and subsequent issue on cassette, Fancies has come to represent an antithesis to what I originally termed ‘a work in parenthesi…
Time machine vol.III
Third Volume of the ‘Time Machine’ series (volumes I and II have been released on two separate cassettes on Entr’acte). “The Time Machine project was conceived in order to find a simple and immediate way to work with rhythm. I built two cheap and imprecise, almost-square wave oscillators with a wide range of frequencies. These oscillators can sweep and cross-modulate from sparse pulses to high frequency audio signals. I use a mixer to create feedback between the filters, CV and audio signals and…