★Bocian Records
Dead Space
Blip is a duo collaboration between Jim Denley and Mike Majkowski: two of Australia's most prominent improvising musicians. They began playing together in 2002, as members of The Splinter Orchestra, and formed Blip in 2009. They have been developing their own approach to the woodwinds/strings duo arrangement, deconstructing and reconstructing this format. Blip music focuses on duration, the subtleties of sound, the pitch within timbre and texture, as well as pulse. Wi
Split
Much time has passed since the release of "Can't Illumination" in 2003, and Anna Zaradny and Burkhard Stangl meet yet again, now on each side of a vinyl record on the Bocian Records label. There were, however, many various encounters in various circumstances in between those two official events, and one of them is shown in the photos on the cover. This is hardly a chance meeting as the two compositions have more in common than it might seem at first sight. Take the misguiding beginnings, f…
Moonish
The tempered tonalities of Abraham's piano mesh with the atonalities of Brown's prepared guitar and utensils. Through concentrated listening and the implementation of conventional and extended instrumental techniques the resultant tones and textures pull at and morph into each other creating a mysterious sonic world, half here, half there. With combined extensive histories in jazz, improvisation, pop and rock music Chris Abrahams and David Brown together are: 'culture of un'.
Testacoda
Jérôme Noetinger is an improviser and composer of electroacoustic music based in Rives (near Grenoble), France. He plays Revox, tapes and radio. SEC_ is the moniker of Mimmo Napolitano, an electronic musician and sound engineer from Naples, Italy. He plays Revox, no-input feedback, laptop, electronic devices. Together these two play the kind of improvised electronic mayhem that put Europe on the map. Testcoda features two separate recordings of shapeshifting electronics. One side recorded…
Mutanza
This CD presents compositions for piano using the instrument in an unorthodox way. The strings are bowed with nylon strings, stimulated by E-Bows, rubbed with metal, the keys' sound is examined as a corrugated surface and staccato rhythms are repeated in a narrow register. On the one hand, the pieces introduced here explore new ways of playing the piano. In this sense they are enlarged playing techniques, as they have been developed for most instruments in the second half of the twentieth …
Black Plume
Amongst the first generation of innovators in non-idiomatic and non-composed music, Keith Rowe has distinguished himself through his intense collaboration with younger musicians, collaborations that have engaged all involved in processes of reciprocal influence. Rowe has clearly been a teacher, or in his own words a 'permission-maker', for international groups of musicians who (especially in the last twenty years) have taken up his exploration of dislocated instrumental technique, new modes of l…
Paper Fault Line
James Rushford and Joe Talia are two of the most exciting musicians active in the Australian experimental scene, engaged in major collaborative projects with figures such as Jon Rose and Oren Ambarchi. On Paper Fault Line, they use strategies from contemporary composition, improvisation and electro-acoustics to create a sensuous and approachable, yet subtly disturbing, 30-minute suite. Eschewing the homogenized sound palette and dynamic conventions of post-GRM musique concrete, the record is str…
Solo Drumkit Improvisations
RESTOCKED!! Solo Drumkit Improvisations is a richly detailed document of Sean Baxter's explorations in extended percussive technique. Utilising stochastic structures applied to the conventional drumkit, Baxter exploits the sonic potential of a range of percussive implements including, bamboo wok brushes and chopsticks, enamel camping plates, aluminium wind-chimes and wok lids, scrap metal, and even the body. Recorded by acclaimed Australian engineer, Christopher Lawson, with assistance from…
More Impossible Futures
It seems that Bocian Records only releases 7"s these days and that they have a soft spot for improvised music from down under. Following Sean Baxter's 7" from a month ago, here is Robin Fox, an improviser from the world of electronic music, playing laptop and on one side entirely EMS VCS3. Two pieces that sound hardly improvised, but more composed. The 'More Impossible Futures' on the a-side is a more introspective piece of various layers of electronics sounds, which are put together in a rather…
Rurokura and Eastern European folk music research volume 2
Robert Piotrowicz is one of the most prolific artists in the Polish experimental and improv music scene. As an instrumentalist and composer he works most often with Anna Zaradny, Burkhard Stangl, Zbigniew Karkowski. Other collaborators in recent years included Jerome Noetinger, Xavier Charles, Lasse Marhaug, John Hegre, Valerio Tricoli, John Butcher, Tony Buck, Oren Ambarchi, Kevin Drumm, Kasper T. Toeplitz, Lionel Marchetti and others. This 7" features three pieces based on folk tunes, reconstr…
split LP
A split album by two masters of 'loud drone music' with an entirely electronic background. Piotrowicz already surprised us with 'Lasting Clinamen' on CD (see review in Vital Weekly 621), and this is now continued with 'Clinamen 3', also recorded using analog modular synthesizer. He plays what seems a loud, looped drone (no doubt repeated within the machine), which is piercingly loud at the start, but just like his great CD, he knows how to create a subtle piece music after that. It grows and it …
Pèl Nord
As source of sound Ferran Fages used radio receivers exclusively. It may seem that using various unconventional devices, often extremely amplified and processed, has become a staple of contemporary experimental music language."*Pèl Nord*", however, seems very fresh and certainly makes a new, intriguing chapter in the career of this composer. The dynamics of the record doesn't rely on a traditional patter of a quiet start, increasing drone and reverberating finale. Unhurriedly, it accustoms the l…
Wrestling
Kevin Drumm, analog synthesizer, electronics. Jérome Noetinger, electronics. Robert Piotrowicz, analog synthesizer, guitar. “What is your name? Wrestling is a unique 7” single consisting of a 3 way tag team made up of Kevin Drumm (USA), Jerome Noetinger (France) and Robert Piotrowicz (Poland). All 3 artists have solid reputations in the world of experimental electronic music. Here they have it out with one another and the machines in front of them. The result is a devastating electronic maelstro…