★Bocian Records
Jedwabnik
More music involving the seemingly always-at-work Wojciech Kucharczyk (does the man ever sleep?), this time in a quartet alongside B a ej Król, Jerzy Mazzoll and Radek Dziubek. The project's title Dwutysi czny translates as 'two thousand' - referring, according to a brief recent interview with Easterndaze, to the year when Król first came across the music of the other three players, a discovery that eventually led him to write to them to ask if they'd donate him some of their recorded sounds to …
Reverie
An amazing mix of spaced out electronics and improvisation, combined with analog/traditional instruments as usual but also taking it even further and into deeper realms! 400 only coloured vinyl, mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. "This Italian group, with the great CD 'Like little garrisons besieged' (2009) and two intriguing 7's made in collaboration with Oren Ambarchi and Steve Roden under their belt, are back with a new release on Bocian Records with even greater momentum. Their music could be l…
L'Origine / TEMA
Drawing inspiration from the "Action Direct" expanded guitar performances of Masayuki Takayanagi, Fusinato places the guitar at the centre of his work. A few crudely played strings provide the impetus for a long chain of electronics which obliterate the original signal and leaves us with a hyper-kinetic wall of full frequency spectrum noise. Like the piano in David Tudor early 1960's performances of Cage's Variations II, in Fusinato's work, the guitar is the object of a dialectic of simultaneous…
Con-gas
Of course we know Bocian since their earliest releases, which was all on 7". Now, an impressive catalogue further, they suddenly return to this format, and make two of them. On one hand Bocian is a label for strictly improvised music and on the other hand for radical experiments in electronic music. This 7" is clearly a product of the first interest. These four pieces were recorded earlier this year in Vienna and has Nilssen-Love on congas and Gustafsson on slide and brass saxophones. This is th…
Scrumptious sabotage
A recording of live performances which brought together two essential figures of the contemporary scene: an oustanding Norwegian composer and vocal artist Maja S.K. Ratkje and a celebrated improviser and composer, former DNA drummer, Ikue Mori. The common sound territory, created together by Mori and Ratkje, balances between quietly growing tension and powerful outbursts of unrestrained, relentless noise. Within this harmony, Ratkje takes adventurous excursions towards the borders and unknown fa…
Moscaio
Long time before humans began to exploit the properties and the uses of the electromagnetic spectrum, animals had already developed a sophisticated system for the manipulation of waves and the transmission of sound signals for the purpose of communication and orientation. Ethologists and natural scientists have shown that many species of animal like dolphins, whales and insects live into an undulatory space made of signals and calls, of frequencies and amplitudes, a radically temporalized…
Rainbow Grotesque
Olivier Di Placido and SEC_ show a new face of improvised music. Instead of forced passages of conventional instruments, we get a soundtrack made with waste and garbage. SEC_ uses organic samples, tapes, and a Revox tape recorder, while Olivier Di Placido's guitar has object stuck between its strings. Both introverted and terrifying, the result of their collaboration is sounds from rags, pipe elbows, and bunches of wire. To an academic audience this will be experimental musique concrète, …
Second Breath
CD. Ken Vandermark, tenor sax, Paal Nilssen-Love, drums, Lasse Marhaug, electronics. Recorded live November 23rd 2011 at the Vortex, London UK by Mick Ritchie. Mixed by Lasse Marhaug. Produced by Fire Room. Artwork by Naiel Ibarrola.
Pink pearl
Frans de Waard (1965) has been producing music since 1984. First as Kapotte Muziek, but throughout the years, he also worked as Beequeen (with Freek Kinkelaar), Goem (with Roel Meelkop & Peter Duimelinks, both of whom are also a member of Kapotte Muziek these days), Zebra (with Roel Meelkop) and such solo projects as Freiband, Shifts as well as his own name. He played various solo concerts as Goem-FDW in Japan, as part of a package tour with Pan Sonic. Frans de Waard also likes to play sets of i…
Harm
Acoustic noise ! Tony Dryer, contrabass. Jacob Felix Heule, percussion. Guro Skumsnes Moe, contrabass. HŒvard Skaset, acoustic guitar. Cover by Lasse Marhaug.
Kitchen
Kevin Drumm is a musician not only known as a one-man-orchestra exploring the boundaries of music, but also a star under the banner of inestimable Bocian Records label. This time we were granted with access to his kitchen. The LP is limited to 34 minutes, consisting of 2 pieces, originally recorded in 1996 yet fully remastered in 2012. Side one piece slowly opens a kitchen door. Smooth, equilibrious and loopy sound fractions that surpass those requirements ambient music is bound to meet. F…
Fuzz_Galopp
During the work for Voice Crack duo Norbert Möslang was one of the pioneers in the field of sound installation techniques usage in live improvised music. His instruments are cracked everyday-electronics, but sounds themselves are delivered from the mechanical properties of these devices. This kind of approach seems to be similar to Peter Fischli and David Weiss practices in the visual arts’ fields. The comparison of the film documentaries - "The Way Things Go" (1987) about Fischli/Weiss activiti…
Sieve
As a duo Tim Catlin and David Brown aka Candlesnuffer come together as 'Helium Clench' and boast long histories in the Melbourne and international avant-garde music world. Both have independently developed a fascination with microtonal sound, in particular through Catlin's construction of harmonic overtone guitars and metal rod instruments tuned in just intonation, and in Brown's case through his explorations using the quartertone bass guitar. 'Sieve', their first duo recording is a stud…
Songs
Zeitkratzer releasing "songs"? Isn't Zeitkratzer a contemporary music group? Or a noise band? Songs? These songs actually have been developed over several years and evolved from a fashion show zeitkratzer was making the music for. Marc Weiser a.k.a. rechenzentrum, since then a member of zeitkratzer, sings. Marc has already caused some furore as Mark Markowitch, singing fake songs in fake languages in some hidden Berlin bars. So now all of those together: zeitkratzer's noise, zeitkratzer's…
Chiapaneca
A great, vivid recording of some wild playing, using the entire kit, rolling about on the various skins and cymbals. Recorded at Festival El Nicho Aural by Daniel Goldaracena at Centro Cultural España Mexico D.F 12 mayo 2012Mastering and cover design by Lasse Marhaug
Atonal drone
Rarely you remember the moment you listen to a record for the first time as something clear and tangible - what is retained in the memory is the atmosphere and the emotions that the music evokes, but not much else. Atol Drone (Polycephal 2002) was an altogether different case. It broke through into my mind surreptitiously like a high Pacific wave and for years it held sway over the area of my musical memory responsible for the rough sea, atomic fears, sea fever, incomplete Morse signals no…
Ambient
Ambient describes something that imperceptibly pervades the environment to the point of barely existing. It affects us, but we might not know it. It controls what we regard as the most basic qualities of our lives, so basic that we consider them inconsequential, everyday, and normal. The earliest ambient music was likened to furniture. This is not ambient music. But there are the qualities of ambient music here. The sounds surround and envelop. Groundwork is laid for assumptions and choices to b…
You're Next
I am not sure if I ever heard of Massimo Pupillo, who plays 'low end bowel chainsaw' on this record, but since a lot seems tongue in cheek here, it might also be a guitar with effects. Everything here says: we poke fun at those who play with the stereotypes of the world of industrial music. One side is called 'First Offence' and has titles as 'Necrophiliac Cunnilingus', 'Rope For The Undead' and 'Vomit Buffet', while 'Second Coming' has 'Rib Cage Of Rotting Horror', 'Broken Spine Crushed Cranium…
Crowded
Breathtaking slab of the black stuff from peerless drone/noise (de)composer Kevin Drumm - with "spectral editing and time domain consultation" by Russell Haswell. We shouldn't need to tell you that this is a big deal. But, in case you're a bit daft; it is. Haswell helps out on the wormholing A-side 'Repetitive Algae'; a single tract of cacophonous, morphing rhythmic noise reminding of Philip Corner's 'Coldwater Basin' - a home recording of cold water running from a faucet into a basin - b…
Moulins
Tomasz Krakowiak's latest work on Bocian Records is a purely sonic affair. Performed on acoustic percussion instruments, it has little to do with percussion music. Each piece is named after a particular location and or a sonic event present there. Krakowiak's monotonous playing a specific instrument seems to achieve an effect of a field recording made at the given location. What makes this effort successful is a broad range of his techniques and sonic intuition. These excellent recordings…