New Arrivals
N 7 (Interviews Special Issue)
Bilingual (English/French) and biannual, Volume - What You See Is What You Hear is the first magazine devoted to sound issues in art, and to the complex relationships between visual and sound forms, both in contemporary art and history. Interviews Special Issue. 'Why a special issue devoted to the interview? This kind of text has been a feature of the magazine since the very first issue, and is intrinsically bound up with words Ð or at least with dialogue, because interviews are not necessarily …
In St Cuthbert's Time
The Sounds of Lindisfarne and the Gospels. To celebrate the exhibition of the Lindisfarne Gospels at Durham Cathedral from July to September 2013, awardÐwinning wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson has researched the sonic environment of the Holy Island as it might have been experienced by St Cuthbert in 700 A.D. 'A 7th Century Soundscape of Lindisfarne. Throughout human history artists have been influenced by their surroundings and the sounds of the landscape they inhabit. When Eadfrith, the B…
Spectral arrows : Rotterdam
Spectral Arrows is an ongoing series of long-duration performances for guitar and electronics. In Spectral Arrows, Fusinato arrives at the venue when it opens for business, sets up his equipment facing a wall and proceeds to play for the whole day until the end of business hours. Fusinato presents himself here in the guise of a worker, clocking on and unceremoniously clocking off at the end, refusing to allow the behind-the-scenes mystery of rehearsals and preparations to lend an aura to the per…
First Burning Attraction
Formed in 2009, Damien Dubrovnik is the Danish electronic duo of Christian Stadsgaard (Sarah's Charity) and Loke Rahbek (Sexdrome, Var, Lust For Youth), founders of the Copenhagen-based record label Posh Isolation. In their day-job as label managers, Stadsgaard and Rahbek have been instrumental in establishing the city's prolific and exciting noise/punk community and outgrowing their humble beginnings in noise/industrial culture by attracting a cult/fanatical worldwide following. Working to…
Financial Glam
Jar Moff returns with his second full-length, Financial Glam, a follow-up expanding on ideas first presented by the excellent Commercial Mouth debut LP PAN released earlier this year. Continuing with themes established on his previous LP, Financial Glam reflects the flux and tension of his home city, a gripping opus of grandiose crescendo and collapse, broken rhythm and disquieting calm. These intricately-composed collage works, constructed from hundreds of archived samples, provide a fitting…
Kogetsudai
Kogetsudai is Sylvain Chauveau's 10th album, the second in a trilogy initiated by Singular Forms (Sometimes Repeated) (2010), where the song structure is dismantled and reconstructed on the fringe of silence. Whereas Singular Forms found inspiration from Abstract Painting, Kogetsudai is influenced by Zen rock gardens found in Japan Ñ also the location where the album was conceived (for the most part) Ñ and from which the album borrows its title. Layers of minimal electronic sounds and filtered f…
Music For Fireworks
In 1978, Philippe Genion bought a guitar for 1000 belgian francs (25€). He connected it to his hifi amp, quickly learned how to play "smoke on the water" and a few punk songs with two fingers and within two weeks, pushing the amp more and more to the limit, blew his 200W speakers out. Later, around 1980, he bought an old ARP synthesizer from walloon band "Jo Lemaire plus Flouze" and started playing with these instruments and a few old flanger and distorsion pedals, and started recording so…
Barcelona Express
Stunning work of radical free music by saxophonist Masayoshi Urabe and guitarist Rinji Fukuoka (Overhang Party / Majutsu no Niwa). Recorded in 2004 in various locations (France, Spain, Switzerland and Japan), this album brings together elements of free jazz, rock, noise and even folk music, in a way that is magically spontaneous, iconoclastic and full of grace in every single sound produced. Pretty much uncomparable to any of the music 'out there' nowadays, these are wild cuts by two wild …
Alpen ocean
Alpen Ocean is the final recording of Carole Kojo (Swiss) and Hitoshi Kojo (Japanese) that they left behind as Jüppala Kääpiö, whilst resident in Switzerland. The sound sources are rather familiar instruments and materials for us such as voices, handmade instruments, viola, organic materials and field recordings. However, the style has evolved to a hybrid of our early style: an intense harmonic drone music that has appeared in RAINBOW MASK, and another phase which might be termed as a cosmopolit…
The Soft Room Recordings 1980-84
Paul Nagle is an electronic artist and synthesist from UK who started to produce wonderful fascinating electronic sounds since the late 70's when his parents moved to a remote farmhouse, triggering creative outbursts in many fields - music, painting and writing to name but three. His music which combines elements of electronica, ambient, trance, minimalsynth and new age would have perfectly fit to a label like Martin Reed's Mirage who also released early works of Colin Potter, Ian Boddy, Mark S…
Church organ works
The three piece group from Portugal explore in ten tracks the possibilities of the church organ. The members play in various combinations on different organs. The outcome is very varied. The opening piece is barely audible, but the second piece is a loud, repitive, all register open one. Of course it's hard to see this music without any religious overtones, but Osso Exotico don't give a clue in that direction: all their pieces are untitled. Meditative pieces in most cases, but less minimal then …
Trees Have Cancer Too
Duo of Pedro Sousa and Pedro Lopes, two portuguese young musicians, and some of the most exciting in the plastic, tonal and energic exploration of sound in a long time. Using sax (Sousa), turntables (Lopes) and a communal use of electronics, their music is admittedly nervous, obsessively bent over the following moment. Unlike other past forms of improvisation more concerned with listening and a certain purity of sound, this search is as focused as much as frantic in the pursuit of a new d…
In a Fung Day T!
Since 2001, Duchess Says have been spreading the gospel of the influential and mysterious Church of Budgerigars. Their learned mix of hypnotic rock and saturated keys, concocted by Phil C., Ismael and Simon Says, is delivered by A-C, a sermon laden with the teachings of the novice Mere-Perruche. The congregation has prayed the three Ts; now it's time to reiterate. In a Fung Day T! is their second offering. Adrian Popovich and Joseph Donovan of the Mountain City studio have succeeded in r…
Identity Picks
"Over the last decade, Burlington, Vermont songwriter/producer Ryan Power has tirelessly embarked on the quest to write the definitive song based music, full of accuracy, refinement, deliberation, and perfectly-placed shifting harmonic puzzles. Ryan's latest Identity Picks for NNA Tapes is an eight track song cycle that dances through lush jazz pads, aquatic smooth jazz funk styles, and the sensitive side of progressive rock. These songs are long, shifting compositions, slowly unfolding an…
Live in LSO St. Luke's, London
Iancu Dumitrescu 'Extreme point of gravity' (2009) for ensemble (Hyperion & Talea Ensemble). 'Le silence d'or (V)' (2009) for ensemble and computer sounds. Ana-Maria Avram 'Telesma (X)' for three percussion groups and computer sounds (G. Aguilar, P. Teodorescu, A. Lipovsky). 'Textures (III) / Penumbra' for two bass clarinets (Rane Moore and Tim Hodgkinson) and ensemble (Hyperion & Talea Ensemble).
Ivy (Vatican Shadow / Lakker Mixes)
**Transparent Vinyl - Individually numbered edition of 300 copies** Vatican Shadow and Lakker provide remix reinforcement for the killer debut from Berlin's Tommy Four Seven and Alain from One Million Mangos Mastering as These Hidden Hands. Their original 'Ivy' is heavily informed by the romantic dystopia of mid-late '90s IDM and D&B's grander gestures, gazing out on drizzly grey north European synth skies whilst the reduced tech-step torque ticks and prods like a not-so-dystant cousin o…
Monorails and Satellites
180 gram vinyl version. Tracklisting: Space Towers, Cogitation, Skylight, The Alter Destiny, Easy Street, Blue Differentials, Monorails and Satellites, The Galaxy Way. Recorded at Sun Studios, New York 1966 (a home recording).
Tombstones
LP version. Comes on milky clear vinyl with grey splatter, housed in a gatefold sleeve. The long-awaited, groundbreaking, pop album by acclaimed composer Michael Pisaro. Featuring Julia Holter, Tashi Wada, Cassia Streb and Rob Esler. "Voice: soft, pure (no vibrato), more like folk or pop singing than lieder singing." -- from the book of scores. "I began writing these pieces with a question in mind: what happens to old political songs?" -- Michael Pisaro, 2011. Tombstones reconstitutes the …
Criminale - Vol.2 Ossessione
A record as weird and wild as the cover – filled with really tripped-out sounds from the obscure Flipper sound library in Italy! The music follows strongly in the best style of the rock-driven sounds from Italian horror films – but there's also a more compact approach too, with some funky elements that really make the whole thing sparkle – and a restrained approach that's far less indulgent than the prog styles that Italy was famous for at the time. The whole thing's great – a wicked mi…
Mother of Thousands
As with their previous 'proper' full-length Gettin' Gone, new album Drone Trailer finds Matt Valentine and Erika Elder Still hooked up with The Golden Road, and ready to spurt forth blistering passages of galvanized psych-rock at a moment's notice: after a scorching pile-up of vintage guitar muck, opener 'Anyway' draws to an ill-behaved conclusion with some improv guitar and free-noise skronk, all completely undermined by a jazzy line in tremolo rhodes piano tinkering. Despite such flight…